BY E. F. JACOB, M.A., D.PHIL.,

TWO LIVES OF ARCHBISHOP CHICHELE.'

BY E. F. JACOB, M.A., D.PHIL.,

PROFESSOR OF MEDIEVAL HISTORY I N THE UNIVERSITY OF

MANCHESTER.

T HE existing memorials of Henry Chichele are his register, his breviary, his College and his tomb. From them much is to be gathered about his orderly and systematic mind, his

devotion to learning, his sense of dignified beauty ; they reveal hi sharing the more progressive educational and cesthetic traditions of his day ; a careful administrator, precise and orderly in language that seldom leaves the cool tenor of its usual formality for the warmth of conviction and experience ; a sound leader of the Church, pious and liberal ; a great institutional figure, perhaps, rather than a great human being. Can we recover the patient spirit that lived through a brief age of glory into many long years of anti-climax ? O r must we confess to having lost him among events and more vivid than himself ? For Chichele was neither vivid nor striking : he was not the subject of any contemporaly biography. H e did not stir the monastic pulse like Duke Humphrey-Walsingham dismisses him with a growl-nor cause the lawyer's eye to sparkle, as men like Sir William Gascoigne or Fortescue or Lyndwood. No humanists sent him translations ; representations of him are not plentiful ; in the pleasantest of them, Herman the illuminator has thought fit to frame him amongst his white-taped clerks in the initial capital of his breviary,'

An elaboration OF the Lecture delivered in the John Rylands Library on the 10th March, 1932.

a MS. h b e t h , 69, fol. i ; M. R. James and C. Jenkins, Catalogue of the MSS. in the Library of Lanzbeth, i, 109. On Herman's illustrations, cf. E. G. Millar in Bulletin de la sonYt6 fran~aisepour la rt'production des manusmit.r, 1924, and the remarks of S. C. Cockerell in Burlington Fine Arts Club Catalogue ( 1 908), no. 148.

428

TWO LIVES OF ARCHBISHOP CHICHELE 429

and to depict him in the act of dedicating a church '-at his ordinary tasks and duties on either occasion : little vignettes of barely three inches square.

Not striking, then, but certainly significant. Chichele's tenure of Canterbury was longer than that of any Archbishop before or after him, Boniface of Savoy and William Laud not excepted : just short of twenty-nine years, and they are the years of the Conciliar Move- ment and the almost concurrent papal reaction, of heresy in the dioceses and faction in the Council at home, conquest and aching responsibilities abroad. T o write his biography, it is not enough to go deeply into his administrative life alone ; one must know and feel that background and its strain. Only two writers have faced the task, a Jacobean lawyer and a Victorian dean. Both have treated their subject seriously and well, though it is curious to find how much more sympathy the earlier work excites. Sir Arthur Duck, who in 16 1 7 published his Life of the Archbishop in clear and effortless Latin, was a Devonshire man, a scholar of Exeter College, elected to Chichele's foundation of All Souls during Hoveden's wardenship in 1604. H e became one of the two bursars in 1608,a and Sub- Warden in 1610,4 the same year that the Visitor (Archbishop Bancroft) removed Whitgift's injunction that any member of the College who practised civil law outside the University was to lose his fellowship." This set Duck free to become (1 614) an advocate in Doctors Commons, where he resided for the remainder of his days. AS an ecclesiastical lawyer he played an important part as Chancellor of the Diocese of London and a member of the Ecclesiastical Com- mission! In his only other surviving book, the De autko~itateju7i.s

MS. Lambeth, 69, fol. 192 v. For other representations at Higham Ferrers, All Souls, and in Thomas Chandler's MS. at New College, see J. H. Wylie, Henvy V, i, 302 n., giving bibliography.

Vita Henria' Chichele, Arclziepiscopi Cantuariensis, sub regibus Henvic: 5/' et Vr; Descripta ab Arthuro Duck, LL.D. (Oxford, Joseph Barnes), referred to here as Vita. An English translation of 1699 (London, Richard Chiswell) follows the Latin reprint of 1681, but like tlle latter prints a number of Duck's marginal references to his authorities inaccurately.

C. T. Martin, Catalogue of the Archives . . . of All Souls College (1 877) p. 309.

Ibid. p. 3 10. lbid. There is a perfunctory life of Duck in Dict. Nat. Biog., vi, 87-8, the

author of which makes no reference to the AU Souls' Archives, and mainly refers the reader to the Calendar of State Papers Domestic.

THE JOHN RYLANDS LIBRARY

civilis Romanorurn in dominik Princz@m Christianoncm, finished in 1647 but not published till 1653, when he was dead, he observed that he had studied and practised Roman law for forty years (he took his LLB. in 1607). The treatise is a very good revelation of his mind and method : concise, fully but never pedantically documented, it is the work of a civilian with a singularly clear mind, who had had both a theoretical and a practical training, for, as he says, "after my academic studies I spent many years of actual work in the courts where there is much intermingling of the Civil Law and the Common Law of England.'" Duck was evidently a faithful son of the College, for in 1635 he contributed 100 marks to the beautifying of the ChapelOa Perhaps by those days the domestic contentions of his early years in College had been forgotten : it is amusing to read that in August, 1609, the Visitor told Warden Hoveden that the bursars had been delated to him for sharp practice -"if they can gain f 20 by their traffic in coals, they will probably cozen the College still more in their accounts'-and that they deserved expul~ion.~ In 1 6 12 Duck was able to retort by complaining to the Visitor that the Warden and senior members of the College had allowed themselves f 32 more than their statutory allowance on the plea of the debasement of the coinage.' Whatever may have been the financial position when Duck was there, All Souls had a reputation for law sufficient to induce the great Gentili to get his son recommended by the king for a fellowship.6

'Preface. The book, he says, was completed at Oxford, but it had been written amid the excitements of the Civil War and under the additional affliction of his wife's death. It gives a little historical account of the position of Roman Law in each of the chief European countries. When he reaches England, he naturally has to deal with the Canon Law in pre-Reformation times, and the quality of his touch can be judged from his remark that it was to England that the greater part of the Decretal Letters contained in the Canon Law Collections were sent. P. 155 : " tanta erat reverentia Regum nostrorum erga sedem Romanam ut maxima pars Epistolarum Decretalium in libris juris Canonici ad Anglos missa sit." " In the Demetales of Gregory IX are included over 400 decretals of Alexander 111 and the remarkable thing about them is that he addressed to this country more decretals than to all the rest of Europe put together " : Z. N. Brooke, The English Church and the Papacy, p. 213.

Martin, op. n't., p. 297. Ibid p. 3 09. Ibid. p. 329. Ibid pp. 307-8.


Warden Hoveden wrote a short life of Chichele, which is still preserved, and it is not unlikely that the lawyer saw it and discussed the subject with him. Duck says that his authorities were, for the government of the Church and Country, " our historians and the French" ; for English Church affairs, pure and simple, the Arch- bishops' registers and "certain manuscripts with which Sir Robert Cotton supplied me." " Our historians," apart from the Polychroni- con, seem to have been mainly Polydore Vergil and Edward Hall, not to speak of Bale and Camden ; Monstrelet the Burgundian is the most freely cited foreign chronicler. Chichele's register he con- sulted for convocation and for provincial constitutions. A t Oxford he had acccess to the Efistodae Academicae in the University Archives. T h e Rolls of Parliament he evidently used in some abridgement, possibly Cotton's. His Canon Law apparatus is, as it was bound to be, excellent, and he quotes the principal commentators with ease. H e is familiar with the acts of the Council of Constance ; for Basel he relies on Aeneas Sylvius and Nicolaus de Tudeschis, while for the literature of political controversy he draws upon Bellarmine and shows some acquintance with Bodin. Thus his training and preoccupations prepare us for his method of approach to Chichele : he sees the Archbishop as a prelate of the Universal Church, in touch with Conciliar events and with the Papacy after Constance. Every stage and every point where Chichele acts in compliance with the institutional order of Christendom or as a part of the western hierarchy are clearly marked, and the legal precedents or requirements for such action indicated. Thus he is extremely interested in the ambiguous position of a Cardinal alongside of the Archbishop of Canterbury in England, and happily prints Chichele's English letter of warning to Henry V on the first occasion that the Papacy proposed to confer the red hat upon Beaufort. But he was also an Englishman of Elizabethan sympathies. Like Aeneas and Zabarella, whom he cites with approval, he may adopt a Conciliar point of view, and deplore the Papal victory : but in the long run he believes in an independent eccbsin Angdicana, and with Foxe, whom he had read and pondered, he regards Wyclif as sowing "the seeds of sound doctrine . . . among the other Christian nations." H e translates into elegant Latin the whole of the imposing rhetoric put by Hall into Chichele's mouth when the question of renewing the French war was

2 8

432 THE JOHN RYLANDS LIBRARY

being debated in 141 4 '-the very speech which Shakespeare put into verse '-and accepts the view that the war policy was urged by the prelates in order to divert the king from paying attention to the famous petition of the anti-clerical group in the Commons (1 41 0) praying for the seizure of the temporal goods of the clergy. So too he believes the founder's intention that his College should pray for those who died in the French War to have been due to his being " troubled by scruple, as it would seem, that he had been the author and counsellor of that war," whereas it represents nothing more than the desire to assist the souls of departed Englishmen, his master and friends, in purgatory, the aim of all later medieval anniversaria for the dead. In conclusion, there is no segregation of subjects in Duck's book. It is straightforward annalistic biography, year by year ; there is no suggestion that at any time in his career, as Dean Hook states, " while ever ready to obey the call of his king, Chicheley avoided as much as possible State affairs and gave his chief attention to his spiritual duties."' No archbishop of the later Middle Ages could or would have avoided " State &airsw ; we have only to turn over the pages of Sir Harris Nicholas' Proceedings ofthe P7ivy CozcnciG or the convocation section of Chichele's own register to be aware that constant attendance upon the king in the discussion of high policy was his duty, and there is the clearest possible evidence, both in these two sources and in the words of his foundation statute for All Souls College, that he felt the claims of both militiae, Church and State, -

and met them to the utmost of his ability. The interplay of the secular and the ecclesiastical found in Duck's pages is perfectly justified. If only he had had Rymer and Wilkins to build upon I Yet the

(1 809 ed.) p. 49. Vita, pp 31-37 : 6 C. L Kingsford, Prejudice and Promise in

Fgteenth Century England, p. 1 1. At the time of the Leicester parliament, where Hall says that the speech was delivered, Chichele was not yet Archbishop.

a Vita, p. 104 : '' religione uti videtur perculsus, quad illius belli author et suasor fuisset." On this see the remarks of Sir Charles Grant Robertson, All Souls CoLlege (1 899), p. 3. ' Lives of the A rchbishps of Canterbury ( 1 867), v, 64. This was

written about Chichele in 141 8, but shows a fundamental misconception of the Archbishop's constitutional position throughout. A cognate error is found in Hook's too rigid dichotomy of " parliamentary convention " and " ecclesiastical Synod," when he deals with convocation (ibid., v, 80).


remarkable thing is that without these indispensable, if sometimes rather eclectic, helpers, he has written the account that he has.

In Dean Hook's company we are somehow in a more distant world, and it is not only because Duck was nearer in time and thought to the age when Europe, with all its sharpened national divergencies and despite the Reformation, still possessed a common consciousness and identity. T h e Lives of the Archbishofs, a sort of continuous history of the English Church, nearly on the same scale, though not imbued with the same learning, as the books of Pastor and Mann, is still a useful work. But it has " dated " in the way that the lawyer's Life has not ; for the inspiration of Cotton and Spelman was all around the advocate of Doctor's Commons ; to a historian that was a stimulus more objective and scientific than anything that northern industrialism or the peace of a Sussex close could provide. Hook, before he went to Chichester, was the vicar who entirely recreated English Church life in Leeds. It was no small achievement to come from that great parish, where the practical life was everything, to the prolonged labour of a lengthy historical work. But there is a certain isolation about his outlook. His view of the Church of England as a branch of the Church Catholic which can exist in purity under any form of government separated him from the Tractarians,' and made him, while repudiating Erastianism as they did, less sympathetic to the position of the Papacy as it had evolved under the need for organization and discipline in the Church. A t the same time his desire to narrate English Church history via the Archbishops of Canterbury made him heighten the importance of his figures, and see them leading when in fact they were content to play a cautious and co-operating part only. There is no evidence, for example, that Chichele took any prominent share in Henry V's clever management of the Emperor Sigismund, when he visited England in 14 16 ; yet Hook suggests that on the subject of the Council as well as on the attitude of this country towards France Sigismund " came to a good understanding with Chichele." W e know Hallam's attitude towards the problems of Constance, we can make a shrewd guess at Beauforfs and Richard Flemming's, but have we more than a single letter of Chichele grumbling at exemptions and dispensations ? Do we gather anything about his view of the treaty of Canterbury beyond the slender

Dict. Nat. Biog., ix, 1 1 70, 1 1 73.


fact that he showed his compliance by accompanying Henry to Calais in September, 14 1 6, for the negotiations with France and Burgundy ? Obviously in its later stages the treaty was discussed in meetings of the Council, when he was present, but is there any record of his opinions ? This is a single and not unrepresentative instance of imaginative gilding, the anxiety to find significance where none exists. Another example is the dean's view that after the surrender of Rouen in 14 1 9 Chichele " gradually ceased to be the inere lawyer and became a theologian." The only evidence for this is the administrative measures taken for the ~ h u i c h in the conquered territories. No treatise, nor sermon to give an indication of this " new " tendency, exists. To the end Chichele was never a " mere lawyer " ; he had theologians round him, he was in close touch with the learned of the mendicant orders who helped him in dealing with heretics ; Richard Ullerston dedicated a theological treatise to him,' and he presented a fine set of theological books to his College ; but " theologian " he can never be described in the Merton sense of the word.

Let us compare the two accounts of Chichele's early years. Duck says that he was born familia obscura ; the Dean's opinion is " that his father was engaged in trade is as certain as that through success in trade he was able to become a landed proprietor."' WF know nothing about Thomas Chichele beyond the tradition that he was a draper of Higham Ferrers and the fact that he was several times mayor of that place, that he held property there,' that he was of sufficient standing to marry the daughter of an armigerous family (the Pyncheons) and that he was buriedin the Lady Chapel of the parish C h ~ r c h . ~ Hook claims that Henry Chichele was educated in the College of " St. John Baptist on the Hill " at Winchester,' established

A Commentary on the Psalms. The treatise was among the original books of All Souls College : Archives of All Souls Coll., Misc. no. 2 10. See Appendix, infra, p. 472.

See infra, p. 469. J. H. WYlie, History of England under Henry IV, iii, 87 and n. Higham Ferrers, Mayors' Account Rolls, unnumbered. ormation

from notes on these records compiled by the late Mr. A. F. Lea id ). The brass is in the form of a cross, bearing the symbols of the four

Evangelists. Thomas died in 1400. Next to it is the splendid brass of his third son William (d 1425) and Beatrice his wife. For illustrations, see Stemmata Chicheleana (1 765). plates 1 and 2.

'0). at, p. 7. Wylie, of. d, p. 138corrects.


by Wykeham as a preparation for New College. There was no such place. Wykeham kept a school for boys at Winchester from the beginning of September, 1373, at which date the Winchester College archives record the appointment of Richard de Herton as Master for ten years.1 Hook evidently misread a document in Wykeham's episcopal register directing that the scholars in his college should attend service in the parish church of St. John the Baptist on the (St. Giles's) Hill, .while they lived within the parish and their chapel was not yet buika Under Herton or his successor Chichele learned his grammar before passing on to acquire the foundations of his legal knowledge at Oxford. H e seems to have resided in College from 1386 to 1 392,4 when he was ordained sub-deacon ; he was probably one of the ten scholars in Canon Law, for he took his LL.B. in 1390, and we know pretty accurately, from Mr. Leach's list, the books which he would read on that subject in the New College library: H e was destined for the Court of Arches, the clever young clerk's equivalent of going to the bar, and while pleading there as an advocate he supported himself from the Rectory of St. Stephen's, Wallbrook.' It was from this vantage ground that he came to the notice of Richard Mitford, bishop of Salisbury, and began a ten years direct connection with the cathedral church and diocese that seems to have been one of the chief forces in his life. In an earlier paper I gave some account of the chapter in the early fifteenth century, its high intellectual standards, and the fame and distinction of its use which Chichele later did his best to generahe ; in this respect Salisbury presented

Bishop Lowth, Lr;fe of William of Wykeham (1 759), Appendix, p. ix. a Ibid., p. xv ; Wykeham's Register, ed. T. F . Kirby (Hampshire

Record Soc.), ii, 408. 'The object of the scholars at Winchester, when it was founded, was

" grammaticam addiscere et in ipsa arte seu ecientia grammaticali studere " : " Statutes of New College, Oxford," p. 6, in Statutes of the Oxford Cofleges (1 853).

See the information from the New College Archives, given in Hook p. 8.

Collectattea (Oxf. Hist Soc.), vol. iii, pp. 235-239. He became rector on 30 March, 1396, and exchanged livings with

Robert Bush, rector of East Hendred on I0 Sept., 1397 : Reg. Braybrooke, fols. 141 and 153 v ; Harleian MS. 6955, fol. 17.

"' Some English Documents of the Conciliar Movement," B.J.R.L., vol. 15, no. 2, July, 1 93 1 .


a parallel t o fifteenth-century York, that focussed in its chapter the learned life of the north of England. Chichele became archdeacon of Dorset on 3 September, 1397, archdeacon of Sarum (by exchange) in 1402, and chancellor of the cathedral in 1404 : his prebends were Yetminster Prima, 7 December, 1397 ; Rotefen in Amesbury (later changed to Winterbourne Earls), 22 January, 1397, to April, 1398 ; Fordington and Writhlington, 28 August, 1400, to October, 1400 ; Bedminster and Redcliff e, 1 9 June, 1402, and Fordington and Writhlington again from 2 September to 14 December, 1 404.' A s Chancellor he would naturally hold the prebend of Brick1esworth.B It is interesting to note how in the lists printed by the late Mr. W. H. R Jones the names of the two Mitfords, Walter and John, occur in close proximity to his own. In addition to these prebends, Chichele held the rectory of Sherston Magna.8 W e can see him active as archdeacon of Sarum in 1 403,4 and in 1405 the " Draper " Act Book of the Chapter reveals him complaining that he had not received notice of a meeting at which some assignment of premises had been madeOK I suspect that he may have occupied Lindenhall in the close, a canonical house built by Elias de Dereham on its western side. It may have been Salisbury that originally brought him into contact with the great Lyndwood. Duck omits this part of his life, all but for a brief reference, and the dean regards it as a transient stage in his legal career ; but the church that occupied a unique position in the southern province was both Chichele's spiritual home and his training ground as an ecclesiastical administrator. And the fabric itself I Has not Professor Alexander rightly described it as " pure poetry " ?

' W. H. R Jones, Fasti Ecclesiae Cathedralis Saresburiensis, pp. 434, 4 13, 382, 361, 4 13 (in order of time).

a C. Wordworth, Salisbury ProcesstStms and Ceremonies, p. 137. In 1400 he presented a vicar to Sherston, of which he himself became

rector on 26 July; in 1401, as rector, he presented W. Mollyng, a Cloucestershire vicar, in exchange with his former nominee, T. English. Sir T. Phillipps, Institutiones Chicorurn in comiiatu Wiltoniae (1825) i. 87. , ~

' As archdeacon of Sarum he appointed to the Chantry of St. Clement's, Fisherton Aucher ; and some months later he appears again as presenting J. Pynnok, alias Stephens, to the Chantry at Fisherton: ibid., pp. 89, 90.

ti I owe this information to Canon Christopher Wordsworth. Harleian MS. 862, containing a number of his acts, deserves careful study in connection with his chancellorship.


His legal gifts, the Mitford connection and the eminence of his ~lderman-brothers in the City doubtless brought the rising clerk into the king's employment. T h e London connection is worth some emphasis : William and Robert Chichele were both wealthy grocers and well established in their mistery by the time that Henry became chancellor of Salisbury.' Robert, the second son of Thomas Chichele, became sheriff in 1402 and mayor in 14 1 1 and 142 1 ; his wealth may be judged by his bequest in his will (1438) of money to give a dinner on his birthday to 2400 poor householders, with twopence each for them in cash. William, the elder, was master of the fraternity of the Grocers in 1385, 1396 and 1406, and a representative of London in the Shrewsbury parliament of 1398. H e was sheriff in 1409-1 41 0.2 In 141 9 we find them both sitting in the Court of Aldermen to elect the aldermen and commoner representatives of the City in parliament ; ' and for years before that the brothers had been found together in the same court or on the same committee,' "singular columns of stability," if we may adapt the chronicler's picture of Archbishop Hubert Walter. Nor should it be forgotten that Henry Chichele came from a manor in the duchy of Lancaster. T h e Lancastrians looked well after their own ; the revolution which put Henry Bolingbroke on the throne was predominantly a family and territorial change : it meant the advancement, alike in Church and State, for the natives of the duchy as well as for the supporters of the duke

From the late summer of 1406 to 1408 the archdeacon of Salisbury was continuously abroad in Henry I V s service, working, with Sir John Cheyne, for the termination of the Schism, and varying his labours with a mission to Charles VI of F r a n ~ e . ~ Hook makes the curious statement that the expenses of the mission to Innocent VII were defrayed by Chichele himself. In point of fact they are entered on the Pipe Roll: Chichele was doing well by the time he received

Wylie, Henry IV, iii, 136 f. Calendar of Letter-Books of the City of London, Letter-Book I , p. 75. M. McKisack, The Parliamentary Representation of the English

Bovoughs during the Middle Ages, p. 49 n. Cf. Letter-Book I, pp. 69-70, 222, 226, etc. For the dates of these missions, which ran continuously, see B.J.R.L.,

vol. 15, no. 2, July, 1931, p. 374. P.R. 0. Lists and Indexes, XI, Foreign Accounts, pp. 79-80.

Cheyne9s account is in Exch. Accounts (K.R.), 32 116.


his promotion to St. David's, but scarcely well enough to maintain two households, an ecclesiastical and a secular, for the required length of sojourn abroad. When in 1407 Gregory XII, as a favour to the ~&lish, both provided and consecrated him to the Welsh diocese in succession to Guy Mone, he was holding, in addition to his Salisbury archdeaconry and chancellorship, the parish churches of Odiharn in Hampshire, ~ ~ a s t Hendred in BerkshGe and Brington in the diocese of Lincoln, and canonries in Lichfield, Lincoln, St. Martin-le-Grand, St. Paul's, Shaftesbury and Abergwilly (St. Davids). His tenures of all these, except for Odiham, were sanctioned in the Papal letter of collation to the Lincoln canonry in 1404.l It was over the Pope's indult allowing him to continue holding these benefices together with the Church of St. David's (May, 1408),' that a famous case, set forth by Hook, was fought in the King's Bench during the Michaelmas term of 1409, when the king claimed that Chichele's prebend of Yetminster Prima was +so facto vacant because of his consecration. It was a question whethkr the law of the land or the Apostle's indult should prevail, and Thirning, C.J., took the opportunity (what medieval justice could have resisted it 3) of making some ponderous observations about the need of maintaining the law of the kingdom against Apostolic encroachments. Dean Hook, who quotes approv- ingly his remarks from the Year Bookss might have pointed out that the indultl was, in itself, thoroughly reasonable. The register of Chichele's vicar-general, John Hiot, shows that Mr. John David, the late chancellor, who died in 1407, had been guilty of embeule- ment and had impoverished the Church of St. David ; and the petition of Chichele himself for allowance of the heavy dilapidations throughout the bishop's estates6 makes it clear that Guy ~ i n e , busy as treasurer and living most of the time in the Strand, had not troubled to look after the lands and manses. From the Blah Book of St. David's we know that their annual value early in the fourteenth century did not exceed f 333 6-a contrast with Winchester or a

Cal. PafiaZ Lett.. vi. 56-7. ' ibid. , vi, 112. . .

Op. 15't.l p. 23. The Episcopal Regijtevs of St. David's, 1397-1518, ed. R F.

Isaacson, i, 380. Cal. Papal Lett., vi, 1 34. Th Black Book of St. David's, ed. J. W. Willis Bund (Cymmrod-

orion Rec. Soc v, 1902), p. vii


great principality like Durham. It was natural for Chichele to fight the case, though he had to give way in the end ; but he did the nkxt best thing ; he got his cousin William, though still a minor, put into both his Salisbury chancellorship and archdeaconry, when he surrendered them in 1409.'

The see of St. David's was admittedly a stepping-stone to higher things, a source of income for an absent administrator or diplomat. No of Chichele's training and orthodoxy would feel at home in a diocese where great numbers of the clergy were married,' some grossly immoral,' or where the bishop would be called upon to deal with the problems of outlandish tenures upon the episcopal estates.' Only the register of Chichele's VicarZenera1 has survived ; for the bishop himself there is significantly none. H e was not enthroned till 20 May, 14 1 1, and even then he resided only for a short while : the interim had been spent largely upon Conciliar business and after that upon his embassy to France in 141 0. His choice (1 4 Jan., 1409) as one of the delegates to the Council of Pisa was justified by his previous knowledge of the Curia, and, it would not be too much to conjecture, by his ability to work with Bishop Robert Hallum, the leader of the delegation. Both Duck and Dean Hook, the former especially, give some~attention to the first of the Conciliar assemblies ; but neither of them have grasped the fact that the English played there a r61e of considerable importance. Before the delegation, after passing by way of Paris where they heard Cerson's great address, arrived on 30 April, the thirty-seven articles of accusation against the contending pontiffs had been read by a ' Magister Anglus, unus de secretariis Concilii ' (24 April).' Mr. F. D. Hodgkiss has suggested

Cal. Papal Lett., vi, 2 14- 15. a Tlie Black Book of St. Davids, pp. xlviii and 201 ; described mainly

as capellani, in some areas they are stated to be heads of the families that made up the gwele.

' E.g. William Coytlodie, prior of Lawhaden, who kept a mistress at Tenby (vitam dun? enormiter dissoZutam), and refused to reside : St. David's Registers, i, 387.

* The military tenants held by charter ; others, in the gwele, by gavelkind ; others held as Tydwaldi (Black Book, p. 54) ; others by the Welsh tenures of Howel Dha, "a law of all laws the most imperfect, unwritten, not free from change," as the commissioners of 1535 stated (Valor EccL., iv, p. 379).

The fifth session, Mansi, xxvii, 124. For the articles see ibid. xxvi, 1 195- 12 19, and Hefele Leclercq, vii, 22-28.


to me, with some probability, that this is Richard Dereham, chancellor of Cambridge, who had been prominent in the Council from the beginning.' When they came, the English at once proclaimed their adhesion to the assembly in a lengthy sermon by ~al lum, ' all accounts of which take care to give the mandate addressed to him and his colleagues : his delegation, he said, came with the authority of the king and the-English prelates and clergy, to abide by the decisions of the Council of the greater and wiser part, and to do everything in their power for the good of the Church.' Later, when the Council legalized the steps taken by the Cardinals and declared its competence to decide the cases of the recalcitrant pontiffs, the English emphasized the decision and induced the Council to accept certain modifications of their own.' Hallum pointed out on behalf of his delegation that at

-

the moment the Council could make no general decree in this sense, since there had been no general subtraction of obedience, owing to the fact that certain of Benedict's Cardinals still remained recalcitrant, and uniformity on this point was a preliminary necessity. The reservation betrays a canonist in the English delegation, and it is not difficult to imagine who that was. What part, however, Chichele or the English as 4 whole took in framing the &ellus, or common schedule of grievances presented by the nations to Alexander V about the middle of July, 1409, we do not know ; but some information about the earlier stages, when the schedule was being debated, we can glean from the extremely interesting letter of Robert, prior of Sauxillanges, proctor of the abbot of Cluny, to his principal, written on 28 June6 The bishop of Salisbury, he gives us to understand, spoke freely on the subject of exemptions-the grievance of which Chichele was later to write to the delegation at Constance and which he ventilated in one

For his sermon during the Easter celebrations, cf. Mansi, xxvii, 1 14. On the Text " Justitia et judicium praeparatio sedis tuae" (Ps. hxv i i .

15). . -

Marthe et Durand, Veterum Sm)torum Amplissima CoLLectio, vii, 108.

'See especially Religieux de St. Denys, Chronipue, ed. Bellaquet, iv, 226 f. This and the section that follows I owe largely to the unpublished thesis of Mr. F. D. Hodgkiss, "Bishop Robert Hallum of Salisbury and ecclesiastical reform."

On this see N. Valois, La France et Zegrand Schime, iv, 176. The libellus and the answer is printed in Amplissima ColZ.-vii, 1 124-1 130.

"lbid., 1 1 17 f.


of his early Convocations ; and under the same heading Hallurn took advantage of the presence of the abbot of Citeaux to complain of the ill rkgime of the Cistercians in England! Like appropriations, exemptions were a characteristically English subject of complaint, and Chichele can have been no stranger to the evils that arose from them ; -

the Oxford petition for reform in 14 14 a was to drive home the lesson, and later the English Concordat with the Papacy, which, as we shall see, Chichele attempted for his part to carry out, paid special attention to the point. A t all events, to be a colleague of men like Hallum and those two remarkable religious, Chillenden of Christ Church, Canterbury, and Spofforth of St. Mary's, York (later bishop of Hereford), must have been something of an education, even for the accomplished bishop of St. David's.

Though we must needs resort to conjecture when dealing with Chichele's position in the delegation to Pisa, our task is not thereby vain. he clue of friendships and associations is always worth following, especially when they throw light on the most important phases of a man's life ; and with Chichele, for all the long years of domestic routine and administration, the crucial problems were to be concerned with England's relations with Rome. If our ecclesiastical history in the fifteenth century is to be fully understood, it is essential to bring the English Church into relation with tendencies and events outside the country. To a limited extent this has been realized by our authors, Duck especially ; the Roman lawyer is naturally much concerned with the Councils, but he is not interested in the critical interim between Constance and Basel. It is surprising that Sir William Petyt, whom he must have known, does not appear to have shown him his transcripts of the famous dispute between Martin V and Chichele.' Dean Hook devotes considerable attention to the celebrated quarrel ; but when it is over, his interest does not extend to the preparations for Basel or to the exasperatingly cautious conduct of Chichele when once that assembly had started. By an extraordinary inversion of the facts, he speaks of Martin V's intention "to supersede the system of Hilde- brand," by which " the independent action of National Churches had

A~npIissiima COIL. vii, 1 1 17 f. : "inter ceteras querimonias exemptorurn multum conqueritur de malo regimine Cisterciensium in regno suo Angliae."

Wilkins, Concz'lia, iii, 360-365. 'Inner Temple Library, Petyt MS. 55, pp. 89-99 v.


been recognized and allowed," and refers the reader to an earlier section in his book. This is as misleading as is his description of the enactment which was Martin's particular object of execration as the " Statute of Praemunire" (though the sixteenth century made this mistake), or his unqualified judgment upon Martin's offensive as a e 6 usurpation." The dean suggests that the simple-minded and single- hearted Archbishop did not understand the Pope's underlying aim, and attributed Martin's action to the personal jealousy of Beaufort and his party.' This is to miss the whole point. Jealousy there certainly must have been ; but only a genius could have failed to be hopelessly en- meshed in the network of diplomatic relations between the Pope and his English supporters, the Regent Bedford, and the out-and-out nationalists represented by the Duke of Gloucester and other lay lords, Chichele's attitude towards the Papacy was as much determined by political factors and a foreign situation over which he had no vestige of control, as by his own ~ersonal views. Yet because he was Arch- bishop and legate, the stonn broke furiously upon his head.

Those views, as far as we can understand them, had been formed in the school of Henry V. After Henry's death Chichele's evident desire was to continue the tradition of the master to whom he was devoted, his companion in the tent as well as in the Council. T h e character and sanctified reputation of a monarch who had found time to concern himself directly with the reform of the English Black Monks seemed, while he lived, to make clergy and laity the two wings of a militia of moral right. It is easy to smile at the Emperor Sigismund for succumbing to the stage-management of 14 16, but even a stronger man would have had to recognize that a new European force had come into beiig, backed by subtle diplomacy and aided by the courtesy of an ancient kingdom. It was Henry who in reality directed the operations of the English delegation at Constance, Henry who determined when they should withhold from the German nation the initial co-operation that had secured the abdication of John XXIII. and the condemnation of the heresy which was threatening England just as much as Bohemia. Archbishop Chichele collected the money for the delegates of the Southern province, reinforced the personnel of the envoys in 141 6, ordained prayers for Sigismund's success, pressed


Hallum to do something about the exemptions and dispensations that undermined diocesan authority ; but the letter which he wrote to the bishop of Salisbury, after expressing the Council's grateful acknowledg- ment of Hallum's work, significantly urged him to preserve the rights and honour of the kingdom, and the clergy of England, and to resist the malice of the French, "who are ever opposed to us." ' T o Henry the Council offered valuable possibilities of anti-French propaganda and the mobilization of forces against Gal'licana cdupdicitns. Robert Hallum, the idealist, was an excellent screen behind which the royal will, when it wanted, could operate. Reform, yes, up to la point. Dr. Finke's texts of the Avisamenla or projects of the reforming commissions has made clearer certain matters over which the English -

members were particularly concerned, and some of these ultimately found their way into the English Concordat with the Papacy ; but on the main and burning question, the collation of benefices, the English envoys, to our knowledge, made no recommendations which should apply to this country. More would be gained if Henry, by his instructions to his embassy-a compact body with none of the divisions between University and other elements that made themselves apparent in the French delegation-turned the scale in favour of electing, with hand untied by any preliminary Conciliar reform, a prelate who would recognize his debt and obligation to the king, and would not question the Statute of Provisors and the royal method of enforcing it, the Przemunire legislation. It is impossible to read the absurdly fulsome language of Martin V to Bishop John Catterick, Henry's ambassador to the Curia, in April, 141 9,= without realizing that the Pope knew quite well what he owed to Henry for calling his embassy off the German plan of reform before election and making them concur with the French and the Italians.' When the English Concordat was approved and uttered at Bern on 30 May, 14 18, it contained not a word about Papal reservations. For Martin, uncompliant at heart,

Royal MS. 10, B. ix, fol. 59. Rymer, ix, 680. ' See Fillastre in Finke, Acta Conn'cii Constann'ensis, i, 139, 147, and

the observations of Schelstratenus in Von der Hardt, Magnum Oecumenicum Constantiense Conn'lium, iv, 1426 : " natio Angliae, quae ad mandatum Regis Angliae dimisit in illa materia Regem Romanorum." In July, 14 17, Henry cracked the whip against the members of his delegation who were acting against royal instructions and coming to an understanding with other nations, without consulting the leaders of the delegation (Rymer, ix, 472).


that matter was still to be the subject of negotiation ; ' but Henry for the moment had scored by the omission from the document of any material about provisions. ~ w i c e Chichele had the Concordat entered in his register,' and did what he could to carry out the provisions in it that were closest to English interests : among the commissions entered in that record are a number directed in 1420 to his presentatives in the dioceses of Exeter, Lincoln, and Coventry and Lichfield, instruct- ing them to find out, in accordance with the fourth clause cancelling all incorporations, consolidations, and appropriations since the Schism began, the details of such unions, as a preliminary to further action. Here, indeed, he was prepared to co-operate ; but on the greater question of provisions, the line taken by the Council at home was to continue, whatever the Universities might say, the royal system which made it impossible for the Extravagants Exec~abiZis of John XXII and Ad regimen of Benedict XI1 to take effect within the kingdom.' ~ n ~ l a n d would not admit the general reservations.

A t Martin's side stood a very important man, John of Broniaco, formerly bishop of Viviers, now bishop of Ostia, cardinal of Sant Anastasia and vice-chancellor of the Roman see since 1394. He had belonged to the French party, but in 1409 had come over to the Pisan cardinals ; he had been vice-chancellor to Alexander V, John XXIII, and was now acting as such to Martin. With him he brought the Avignonese tradition of curial administration and a considerable number of Avignonese officials. Twenty-four years had this link with the fiscal past been at his post, and, as Ottenthal shows,

' In the embassy of Henry Grenfeld (Oct., 141 9) and again in Martin's letter expressing surprise that Nicholas Bildeston, Henry's envoy, had said nothing about the subject. J. Haller, "England und Rom unter Martin V," Quellen und Porschungen aus ital. Archiv. u. BibC., viii, 2, pp. 254 f., 291.

' Reg. Chichele, ii, fols. 332-333, 335-335 v. It is worth noting, however, that the government showed considerable

compliance over the bishoprics. By the end of 1421 there had been, in the first four years of Martin's pont&cate, eleven episcopal vacancies. In ten cases Martin had exercised his right, claimed as the result of a reservation made at the beginning of his reign, to provide, and only in three cases (Exeter 1420-2 1, Rochester 141 9, Worcester 14 19) had any previous election or postulation taken place. See Haller, oj. a?., p. 257, n. His nominees met with no opposition, probably because they were acceptable to Henry and the Council.

TWO LlVES OF ARCHBISHOP CHICHELE 445

he must have been responsible for the continuity of policy in regard to the Apostolic chancery, so strikingly seen in the publication of Martin's rules issued on the day after his coronation (27 Feb., 14 18), just before he left Constance.' A t Geneva in July, when the second copy of the English Concordat was given under his supervision to the Provost of Be~er ley,~ he was engrossing further rules for the guidance of himself and future vice- chancellor^,^ and defining the methods of his control over the beneficiary system, like a good methodical administrator, as if nothing had happened or was likely to happen. It is clear that Martin regarded the beneficiary clauses in the Con- cordats as temporary things, and that temporary they became was due in no small measure to his determination to restore and strengthen the Avignonese tradition, aided by those two first-rate curial servants, Cardinal John of Ostia and Cardinal Branda da Castiglione.

T h e change of sovereign in England gave Martin his opportunity. - -

Henry V s system and its supporters must be given no quarter. The following year he delivered his first blow at Chichele by appointing a commission to inquire into the allegation that the Archbishop and the Chapter of Christ Church had issued a jubilee indulgence to those visiting Canterbury in 1 420, and had appointed penitentiaries-when his own jubilee fell in theyear of writing (1 423).4 This letter, which has sometimes been misunderstood, unquestionably relates to celebrations planned at Canterbury for the two hundredth anniversary of the translation of St. Thomas the Martyr by Stephen Langton.' What his commissioners reported to him we do not know ; all that is clear is that from 1423 onwards he was both setting himself to create a party among the English bishops and directing a steady stream of foreign collectors and special representatives at the country," whose business was, among other duties, to send him information and to

Regulae Cancellahe Apostolicae, pp. xii and 187 f. CJ Hiibler, Die Constanzer Reformation und die Konkordiite, p. 130 f.

I have attempted to trace the issue of the various copies, in a forthcoming paper, " Wilkins's Concilia and the Fifteenth Century," Trans. Roy. Hist. Soc., 4th ser., vol. xv.

Ottenthal, p. 204 f. * Raynaldus, A nnaLes Ecclesiastin; viii, 5 73.

Literae Cantuarienses (Rolls Ser.) iii, xxxv. On the original translation, see F. M. Powicke, Stephen Langton, p. 145.

Haller, op. cit., pp. 253, 262 f.


gather the monies which, owing to the action of Henry VI's council - -

under Humphrey of Cloucester, it was not always easy to send out of England. Martin was kept well informed : it cannot have taken him long to seize the essentials of the situation. The strength of the Statute of Provisors lay in the flexibility with which it was administered It could be modified or relaxed, and exceptions could be made out of it, the former on petition of parliament,' the latter by ordinary letters patent under the privy seala It could be applied, in effect, as the government wanted. Supporting it were most of the royal councillors, and a step so radical as its abolition would have to be submitted to the wider circle of the Lords as well as the Commons in parliament. That was the position earlier taken up by Henry IV, so the precedent was impeccable. The only way to secure this end was to persuade or intimidate the two archbishops into representing to both estates in parliament that the Statute wa; contrary t o ecdesiastical liberty, and imperilled the souls of those who maintained it, and to make them echo his promise that English interests would be adequately safeguarded if the Pope was allowed the full system of reservations and provisions that he was claiming elsewhere in Christendom. Exactly when the Pope arrived at this method of attack is uncertain ; probably after the departure of Cesarini in 1426.' Martin began by soliciting Bishop Beaufort and the Regent Bedford ; for three years he was working through persons, trying the method of discrediting some and exalting others, which he knew and practised so well. H e had a superb epistolary style : nothing like it had been seen since Gregory IX, nothing so direct and searching, at times so terrible. Si guam in district0 deijudicio would have troubled the stoutest breast. Quite early in the contest Chichele and his cathedral convent are described as " fallen angels wishing to set up a false tabernacle of salvation." In an age of formulae and jaded palates, his powerfully direct appeals and his scientific threatenings and vituperation went home to the recipients, and in others awoke admiration for such a formidable

' E.g. Rot. Par%.y iii, 428 : modification so long as this did not favour aliens.

E.g. CaZ. Patent RoZZ.ry 1405-1 408, pp. 109, 1 1 1, 1 14, 140, 184, 190, 195, etc. A full list of licencea to seek and accept provisions from ' Rome during Henry IV's reign alone would be a very long one. The majority are granted to graduates of the Universities.

Haller, op. a't., p. 276. Connliay iii, 482-483.


stylist. A n d he had the wisdom of years and the fierce old aristocratic pride of the Colonna. " Viget enim magis animus in debilitate corporis ; et in senibus viget ratio et consilium, duae res necessariae ad regimen et sui et caeterorum."' This was in reply to Thomas Polton's request for permission to resign his see.

The kei to the ituation was neither Gloucester nor Beaufort, but Bedford, and Bedford was a politigue, a balancer of interests, an English diplomatist of a high order. Humphrey and Beaufort might neutralise each other in the Council, but the decisive word would rest with the man who administered northern France. It is clear that Bedford understood the strong and the weak points of his own and Martin's position. His particular care was the conquered French provinces. H e knew quite well that if he was to keep the supply of English money flowing into his treasury overseas, parliament must not be asked to take a step that was unpopular with the majority of its mcmbers. A n d the Regent was intent upon an ecclesiastical policy for the newly acquired territories, which he sought to achieve by Anglo-French action at the Council of Siena.' In February, 1424, the ambassador of Henry VI, Jean de Rochetaillie, Archbishop of Rouen, was working effectively to secure the dissolution of the Council. The Anglo-Burgundian clergy were equally emphatic about its uselessness, and together their plans did much to wreck it, as Martin desired. The quid f r o quo demanded by Bedford immediately after its ending was the creation of a number of French Cardinals favourable to ~ n ~ l a n d and the offer to leave the Papacy the disposal of benefices as before the Schism, but on condition of always choosing one of three candidates privately presented to him by Bedford, as long as the war lasted. Bedford also asked for the translation or resignation of the disaffected prelates, and demanded that the Pope should give Henry VI. the title of King of France and of England every time that he wrote to commending ecclesiastics provided in the conquered provinces ; otherwise Henry might withhold the temporal- ities. H e was also anxious that cases which would normally go to the Holy See should be heard in France by a prelate resident in the English territories, and tried to stipulate that Rome should not inter-

' Raynaldus, 0). cit., viii, 573. For the events consequent upon this, see N. Valois, Histoire de la

Pragmatique Sanction de Bouvges (1 906). pp. xxi-xxvii. 29


vene in the matrimonial suit between the Duke of Brabant, Humphrey of Cloucester and Jacqueline of Hainault, in which he and the buke of Burgundy had been requested to arbitrate. This, in fact, was to be the price of Martin's release from the Council, and it is not hard to anticipate Martin's reception of the terms. On some points he temporized-dabitur bonus et congmus modus-but on the essentials he was perfectly firm. This led to fresh pressure by Bedford and the ominous threat to revive the Callican liberties. Martin's significant and unyielding answer (Feb., 1425) was sent by Julian Cesarini. Only during four months of the year would he relax, in favour of the ordinary collators, his claim to provide, and the ordinaries thus found themselves with a bare third of the non-elective benefices at their disposal. And then came the surprising thing. Bedford gave way. Much later in the year an ordinance of Henry VI (26 Nov., 1425) declared Martin's constitution valid throughout the French territories under English control. The acceptance was by no means to the taste of those supporters of the French monarchy who had only with difficulty resigned themselves to the Franco-Papal Concordat of 14 18 ; that indeed had been bad enough ; but Martin's new claims rendered the crucial clauses of that agreement almost nugatory. The French king's proctor pointed this out in parliament (2 March, 1426) and observed that Christ had said to Peter " feed my sheep," not "shear my sheep" ; l but Bedford overrode their grumbling, and with joy Martin conferred the red hat upon both Jean de Rochetaillie and Henry Beaufort (24 March, 1426). The time and occasion of Beaufort's new dignity are significant. It must have been with some bitterness that Chichele, who had vigorously opposed Beaufort's Cardinalate on an earlier occasion, had to leave Convocation to receive the lord Cardinal upon his entry into L ~ n d o n . ~ Perhaps the real fact is that at bottom Bedford was not concerned with the rights of ordinary collators, and that he was looking for some other concessions from the Holy See. One such favour he had already got

Valois, of. a?., pikes justdicatives, no. 16, p. 23. Kernp was very nervous lest this provision should not be received with favour either by the Cardinals or by the Council in England. Cf: his letter to William Swan, English notary at the Curia, in MS. Cotton Cleopatra C. iv, fol. 165. I owe this, and a later reference to Swan's letters, to Miss WoH.

a For Richard Caudray's protest against Beaufort's visit to England in 1428, c f : Foxe, Acts and Monuments (1 843 ed.), iii. 7 17.


very quickly ; on 20 July, 1425, his friend and helper, Bishop John Kemp, was translated from London to York, and back poor Richard Flemming had to go to Lincoln,' a disappointed man, like Philip Morgan of Worcester, who had entertained hopes of the northern diocese. But on the larger issue it is hard to avoid the suspicion that the concession Bedford most desired was Martin's abstention from exercising his right of reservation over benefices in England. If he thought to buy off the Pope by concessions in France, he was speedily undeceived. Fresh from victories on a parallel issue over Bishop Cameron and James I of Scotland, and having beaten down a similar intransigence in the Portuguese Church, with Charles VII's Council for a time quiescent, Martin was able seriously to set about England, and to begin that tremendous campaign against the Statute of Provisors which Dr. Haller has described so vividly.

T h e provision of Prosper Colonna, a boy of fourteen, to the archdeaconry of Canterbury was made in 1424 ; his reception did not take effect till 1426,a after the Council had debated the matter,8 and then with the stipulation that the benefices allotted for his stipend should not be considered as liable to apostolic reservation afterwards. T h e point of the provision lay in the fact that the collector John of Obizzi was the boy's p r ~ c t o r . ~ T h e provision planted at Chichele's very doors a constant reminder of Martin's threatened hegemony. When Bedford came back in 1426 to deal with the Beaufort-Cloucester dispute, and the Council was again functioning, Martin saw his chance to strike. T h e great attack opened in November, 1426. Did the Archbishop realize that he was one figure in the sum total of those whose subjection to his design Martin had intended ? It is certain that Chichele was surprised at the reports that had been given of him to the Holy See-probably as much by Beaufort, whose bitter struggle with Duke Humphrey had suspended all activity in the Council during part of 1425, as by Cesarini6 Had he been able to under-

CaZ. Papal Letters, vii, 389 n., and Reg. Chichele, i, fol. 39 v. The York appointments are commented on by Prof. A. Hamilton Thompson in his Memorandum to Intevim Rejort of the Appointvzent of Bishjs Corn- mittee (Church Assembly, 1929), p. 42.

Reg. Chichele, i, fols. 162, 162 v. P.P.C., iii, 1 90-1 9 1 ; Rymer, x, 354.

"eg. Chichele, i, fol. 162 v. ; Cal. Papal Lett. vii, 446. Dr. Haller's view that Cesarini's report was the cause of the Pope's

bitterness cannot be regarded as more than a hypothesis.


stand Martin's attitude to the Concordats as a whole, he would have prepared for the worst. T h e victorious Pope was in a hurry, and thought to carry everything with a rush in the last two months of 1426 ; but the task proved quite impossible, and twelve whole months passed before any decision was taken at the Pope's request. Martin chafed bitterly at the delay ; but the letters which he sent throughout 1427, together with the suspension of Chichele's Iegatine authority (April, 1427),' were the real measure of the strength of English feeling on the subject of the reservations. In the new year of 1 428, Chichele and other bishops went, at Martin's bidding, from the lords to the refectory at Westminster and pleaded with tears for the revocation of the Provisors Statute ; but the battle for Martin was lost : everyone knew that the previous year a Papal envoy had been irnpri~oned,~ and that letters from the Holy See had been impounded by order of Bedford.' When parliament had made its decision in the negative, John Kemp could k i t e to the bishop of Dax that everyone,~including ~ u m p h r e ~ of Cloucester, had shown the greatest good will towards the Holy S e e so much had not been shown for fifty years--but the " credulity " of the temporal Lords (and, we may suggest, of the Commons) had done its work-he archbishop had only to bow to the storm for a while. Next year his legatine authoritywas re~tored.~ Bedford had yielded in France, but in England he had followed the example of the Norman kings, and followed it successfully.

T h e Archbishop's humiliation had been bitter. No less than thrice he protested against the Papal action in the spring of 1 427,6 and his

Conn'lia, iii, 484-485. a]olllannis Amundeslllam Annales Monastem'i Sancti Albani (Rolls

Ser.), is 13. Com1ia, iii, 486. MS. Cotton Cleopatra C. iv, fol. 164 v. : " eatenus ut audenter vestre

[aflfirmem fraternitati, quod a quinquaginta annis citra in hoc regno non sit visum dominos saltem temporales tante cum devotionis aflectu, tantaque bene- volentia, se applicasse votis cuius[cun]que patrum occupantis sedem Petri. 'Quid [vectius quos] vero eorum in hoc credulitas fructus parturiuerit vel effectus, dominus videlicet London' episcopus, dominus de le Scrop baro, Richardus de Hasfigs miles et Magister Willelmus Lynwode, utriusque juris doctor, quos ad s. d n. presenciam in proximo venturos regia celsitudo disposuit, vestri donante domino curabunt exponere fraternitati."

Cal. Papal Lett. viii, 64-65. 'Wilkins, Concilia, iii, 485 ; MS. Ashmole 789, fol. 224; Inner

Temple, Petyt MS. 55, p. 88.


peace with Martin he was only able to purchase by the "deeds " that Martin prescribed '-his personal pleading in parliament. It is all the more noticeable, then, that in the early stages of the Council of Base1 he did not throw himself enthusiastically into the Conciliar cause, but maintained a guarded attitude, and one, if anything, favourable to Eugenius IV. A s early as 23 February, 143 1, the Southern Con- vocation discussed names of persons to go to the General Council which was imminent, and actually nominated delegates, but did not finally decide who should go until definite news about the assembly arrived.' O n 1 5 November Chichele sent out the invitation of Cesarini (dated 29 Sept., 1431) to his s~ffragans,~ but little individual, and no official, action seems to have been taken. In the early months of 1432 there was only one Englishman incorporated in the Council -a representative of the dioceses of Bath and Wells, Lincoln and Worcester.' In July, 1432, a deputation from the Council of Basel, headed by Cerard Landriani, bishop ol Lodi, arrived to persuade the English Government to send representatives. A s a result of Landriani's advocacy Henry wrote urging Eugenius to recognize the Council6 which he had attempted to dissolve by the bull of 18 December, 143 1, and the deputation found favour both with Beaufort and-a surprising fact-with Cloucester. The official English delegation was appointed in December, 1432." There is no record of Landriani's dealings with Chichele ; Dr. Zellfelder suggested that the Archbishop's dislike of Cesarini, the leading spirit at the Council, and his hostility to Beaufort may account for his unsympathetic attitude.' The simpler explanation is that he had got wind of the bull of dissolution some time before it was read in Convocation (1 6 Sept., 1432) ; ' but the very fact that delegates were appointed on ~ S e p t e m b e r , in spite of the-bull, to go

Concilia, iii, 473-474 ; d. p. 479. a " Comrnunicatum f i t inter eosdem de personis ydoneis ad generale

concilium Pisanis [sic] ut dicebatur celebrandam transmittendis et tandem appunctuauerunt certas personas, sed non tunc finaliter difinierunt que transirent, quia licet rumores fuerant tunc de huiusmodi concilio generali celebrando non tarnen certitudinaliter super hoc Fuerant informati" (Reg. Chichele, ii, fol. 82).

Concilia, iii, 5 18-5 19. ' Haller, Cona'Iiurn Basiliense, ii, 52. Mansi, xxix, 3 72. Rymer, x, 529. England und das Baslev Konzil(19 13), p. 57. This is a brilliant

study, but often too rapid and arbitrary in its conclusions. ti Reg. Chichele, ii, fol. 87 v.


to the Council at the same time as an embassy (on the matter of the dissolution) to the Pope,' shows that we must not overstate the Arch- bishop's opposition. Dr. Zellfelder was on insecure ground when he suggested that personal motives weighed with him to such an extent ; two difficulties there were of a very different character. In the first place, to the Archbishop's legal mind, the dissolution was a fact which could not be got over ; and the clergy, when asked their opinion in the November Convocation of 1433, thought so too,' although representatives had already been sent to Basel ; secondly, he was utterly opposed to the Council's system of voting in deputations rather than by nations? The new method favoured the more numerous contingents, and it was not the policy of the English Government or of the two Convocations, amid financial stringencies, to subsidize a large delegation for a considerable period ; and there was the further difficulty of the oath of incorporation. Convocation was prepared to send greater numbers, if the oath, which our delegates strongly disliked, was not insisted upon.' It was hesitations such as these, together with their apprehension of a possible softening on the part of the Council towards Peter Payne and the Bohemian heretics, that both made the English late-comers at the Council, and prevented them taking the lively and often decisive part which they had sustained at Pisa and Constance. O n the other hand, the dispute over the see of Worcester, vacant by the death of Thomas Polton, the leading English delegate at the Council, precluded any real understanding with Eugenius.' Crotchety and insular the English must have appeared to those vainly trying, by means of conciliar diplomacy, to heal the long dispute between the Governments of Henry VI and Charles VII.

In all these negotiations, which demand a far more delicate and detailed exposition than I can give here, Chichele appears to have

' Reg. Chichele, ii, fol. 88. The subsidy of twopence in the pound for the delegates was granted at the same time (fol. 89).

Ibid., fol. 94 v ; Concilia, iii, 522. At Basel Thomas Polton of Worcester protested on behalf of Henry

VI, and Peter Partridge on behalf of Chichele, against the Deputation system, while in the English Parliament Lyndwood (not " Linewode," as Zellfelder, who fails to recognize the canonist, calls him) made a similar declaration. The three documents are given by Zellfelder, op. a)., pp. 248-256.

'See the replies of the clergy to the questions put them by Chichele, in Reg. Chichele, ii, fol. 95, and Concilia, loc. cit.

C.P.L. viii, 212-2 19.


stood with the majority in the English Council ; his exact part in them is often extremely difficult to determine. H e was not far from the Wykehamical Thomas Bekyngton, the official helping to form the official mind. Dean Hook makes no attempt to survey these events or to disentangle his hero from a difficult diplomatic background. T o him the archbishop is already " aged " in 1426, though he was probably not more than fifty-eight ; it is now time to behold him in his capacity of founder and benefactor. Arthur Duck, on the other hand, without strict adherence to the Archbishop, pursues the narrative of the Council from Basel to Ferrara and Florence, inter- spersing it here and there with notes from the Convocation material in the Archbishop's register. But there is no attempt to gauge the in- fluence in the foreign relations of this country exercised by a chief prelate who was neither a Conciliar nor a papalist, but a follower still of Henry V , treading cautiously, with medieval steps, in a world where the diplomatic prelate of the renaissance had already made his glamor- ous and sometimes very disturbing appearance. It is hard to say whether, if the English had come early and in strong numbers to Basel, events would have gone the way they did at the Congress of Arras in 1435 ; but it is worth asking the question.

The clerk who crossed to the Surrey shore and entered the manor of Lamhithe would encounter one who was the centre of more than ordinary jurisdiction, a dignitary who was both diocesan and metropolitan, moving in a legal society responsible for the smooth and re- sponsive running of his province as well as for the good order of his own diocese and peculiars. The Archbishop's status gave him the pre-eminent place in the Council ; as papal representative in England it was his duty to hear "the complaints of all and sundry his sub- ordinates" on petition (per viam puereb) or appeal from the consistory courts, and as metropolitan to visit his dioceses and to administer vacant sees, to preside in the synod of his province known as Convocation, and to uphold Catholic doctrine by acting as " principal inquisitor" (the phrase is Chichele's own) in a land which knew not the Holy Office. Each of these activities involved him in a mass of administration that found its way, to a greater or less degree, into his register, the routine record of his archiepiscopate. Of recent years


administrative history has concerned itself primarily with the civil service that grew out of the King's Household. There are indications that in the near future it will be occupied almost as much with the inner technique of the province, the diocese and the monastery, and that the reactions in the later Middle Ages between the two great spheres of administration, civil and ecclesiastical, will ultimately be studied for the light they throw upon the working co-operation of the two com- munities in the century before the Reformation.

The Archbishop (or his registrar) had to be a systematic person. Apart from his own need of accurate information about the personnel and the benefices of his own diocese, at any moment the Exchequer might ask questions that involved the scrutiny of records. Have the nuns of Malling appropriated the church of East Malling and, if so, how long have they so held it ? The Archbishop returns that he has searched the " writs, rolls, registers and evidences " in his possession, both his own and his predecessors', and discovered that the church was appropriated throughout Henry IV's reign.' In the October- December Convocation of 14 1 5 the clergy granted the king two-tenths with the usual exceptions (poor nuns, hospitals, benefices destroyed or otherwise diminished). In the autumn of 14 16 the collectors who had paid in the money were seeking quittance at the Exchequer, but the barons could not grant them this because they had no exact information about the benefices to be so exempted. The Archbishop is asked to scrutinize his registers and other evidences and to make a complete return of all such churches appropriated to religious houses or hospitals within his diocese and jurisdiction, and to give full particulars of vicarages ordained therein, together with the assessment of these vicarages.' When Lincoln fell vacant in 1436 the Archbishop had to forward to the barons of the Exchequer a list of all unassessed and non-tithe- paying benefices and dignities of the annual value of twelve marks and upwards.' The examiner-general of the Prerogative Court and the dean of the Arches had to be kept supplied with details and particulars which were forwarded to them along with their commissions to hear the cases in question. The heavy office-work of the Court of

'Re . Chichele, ii, fol. 373. lbid., ii, 373 v, 374. ' 1bitf. ii, FoL 377 v: mandate (20 July) to Sheriff of Essex and

Hertfordshire . . to distrain the Archbishop so as to make him reply to the


Canterbury could therefore only be carried on by careful filing and indexing in the first instance, and later, in the preparation of the register, by the segregation into groups of the quires upon which the material was copied to form the registrum, ultimately to be bound together after the Archbishop's decease. There was one group for the bulls of provision and translation together with other material touching appointments to sees and abbacies ; another for the institutions, exchanges and other routine business in the diocese of Canterbury ; and others for the wills of the Prerogative Court, Convocation, the administration of vacant sees, visitation records, commissions to officials, miscellaneous letters and royal writs. In the later stages of Chichele's pontificate the quires do not always seem to have been written up punctually. Though he died in 1443, the last report of a Convoca- tion is 1439 ; with one exception his commissions do not run beyond 1434. Internal evidence suggests that the scribes would wait until a good quantity of material had accumulated before they carried out their task.

It is impossible to think of Henry Chichele without the familia whose book his register to a great extent is, from the superb chancellor, William Lyndwood, the author of the Provi~zciale, down to the servants whom dominus rewards with the keepership of the southern gate of the Cathedral precincts or the office of woodman in the manor of Westgate. W e can see him with his steward, the supervisor of his manors, his pages (domicellz], his scutifer, his cross-bearers, as they pass from Lambeth to Otford, Langley Marish, Ford, or the Palace of Canterbury itself. When he conducts his visitations, the legal members of the family will be with him and share his tasks. O n his first eyre, the visitation of his own see, Dr. Matthew Assheton and Robert Raulyn (whom Assheton was to succeed as commissary- general) were commissioned to visit the religious houses which the Archbishop could not himself reach (eg. Minster in Sheppey),' and to exercise "all manner of jurisdiction" there. When the Archbishop went as metropolitan to visit Chichester in 1423, the family divided : while Chichele was giving his injunctions in the Chapter-house and

' Reg. Chichele, ii, fol. 248 v. It is worth noticing that Raulyn, who in earlier days had been a colleague of Chichele's on the chapter of Abergwilly, had followed him from St. David&, where he had acted as Vicar-General to Bishop Guy Mone.


discussed with the dean and chapter the changing of their Use to that of his beloved Sarum, Lyndwood and the indispensable Thomas Brouns, LL.D., were visiting the clergy and people of Chichester in the nave, "whence after the midday meal the lord Archbishop with his fanzilia departed to his manor of Slyndon." ' When he went the same year upon his visitation to Salisbury, a similar thing took place ; on 13 September, while his injunctions were being read over in his presence to the dean and canons assembled in the Chapter- house, Robert Raulyn was visiting the clergy and people of Salisbury in St. Thomas's parish ~hurch .~ After leaving the cathedral city he and others of his fanzilia divided the several deaneries of Dorset and Wiltshire between theme8

The legal notabilities of the family constituted the Curia Cantuariensis, a body in its flexibility reminding one of the Curia regis of the later twelfth century. The commissions in the register are the best introduction to its personnel, and the names show that, like the office of the privy seal, it was a traininpground for the episcopate as well as the chief practising centre of the Canon Law in England. Philip Morgan, who had been auditor in Arundel's day, Henry Ware, Lyndwood's colleague as official during the first years of Chichele's regime, John Kemp, dean of the Arches, and Thomas

. Brouns were all promoted to sees ; of their less celebrated but no less hard-working associates, the names of John Estcourt (examiner- general), John Perche (registrar), Raulyn, Assheton and John Lpdfeld (who succeeded Assheton) frequently occur. The text-books generally point to three distinct jurisdictions exercised by the Archbishop : the Court of Arches in St. Mary-le-Bow, the Prerogative Court of Wills and the Archbishop's own Court of Audience. No doubt these dis- tinctions are technically correct; but the personnel, like that of the early Curia regis, was by no means rigid : Lyndwood, who, as official, unified the whole Curia, would sometimes leave the audiencia where he had been sitting with or without the Archbishop to act with Kemp and Estcourt in matrimonial or testamentary cases in consisto~w nostro de arcubzls; Estcourt, the examiner-general, is given power "to hear and proceed in all cases in the said courts, to wit the Court

' Reg. Chichele, ii, fol. 252. a Ibid., ii, fol. 257 v. 31bid., ii, fols. 258, 258 v.


of Arches, and to do what justice demands," when the official and dean of that Court are absent, definitive sentence being reserved to the official and dean.' In most of the commissions for trial in the Arches the official is omitted ; Kemp (the dean) and Estcourt alone figure in the numerous cases of divorce, restitution of conjugal rights,

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tithe, disputes over compresentation, non-fulfilment of contract. Some- times these are matters which have remained undecided in the audiencia ; more often they are brought per viam puereh or per viam appellationis. Chichele states the point in a sentence of common form :

" W e therefore who by right of our legation and as possessing the prerogative of our Church of Canterbury can and ought to hear all the cases of each of our suffragans subject to us, which come to our hearing by appeal or by complaint, since we are admittedly representatives of the lord Pope in our said

9' 2 province. . . . A considerable proportion of these cases are heard per viam puerele et jure Zegacionis nostre. What distinction then can be drawn between the jurisdictions of the Arches and of the Audience? Lyndwood's lengthy commission as chancellor and auditor qualifies him for all forms of jurisdiction : he is permitted to proceed "in every case and in all business belonging in any way to our cognizance and also in the audience of our court" The real difference, of course, is that the autCiencia represents the Archbishop's original undelegated jurisdiction, which runs concurrently with what he delegates to the Arches. W e are reminded a little of the relations between coram rege and the bench of common pleas in the early days of the thirteenth century. A n excellent example of the nature of the audiencia comes from 1420. O n 9 June the Archbishop, about to join Henry V in France, commissioned Lyndwood in his absence to hear and determine all cases and matters arising in the Court of

'' And after you [Estcourt] have written or have caused to be written the depositions of the first witness, in order that loss of time in writing be saved, you are especially to note when the statements of subsequent witnesses agree or disagree with those of the first witness, and you are to warn the parties at litigation to answer, under ecclesiastical penalty, the questions put to them by the Court and to have their answers drawn up in writing " (Reg. Chichele, ii, fol. 263).

Ibid., ii, fol. 265. Ibid.. ii, fol. 266.

THE JOHN RYLANDS LIBRARY I.

Audience "by reason of our legation, excepting only the case where Lyndwood was a party to the suit.' On 1 8 November Chichele was back at Portsmouth and wrote to Lyndwood saying that he recollected

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giving the other a commission to last only till he was back in England : " lest therefore anyone's right in the causes and matters before you perish, to his detriment, on the gound of it being asserted that we have returned [and that your commission is no longer valid], we make you our representative for further hearing and proceeding with such cases, just as we did before in the same matters that were being tried before you and others of our Audience of Causes." The Arch- bishop's return would $sofado cancel the commission, and the delay in the Audience might be to the prejudice of litigants unless the commission were at once continued or renewed. This shows clearly that the Audience was regarded as the primate's special court G t h an authority derived from his presence alone. No commission such as I,yndwood here received was ever issued to the judges in the Arches.

So much for thejus b~nt ionis held because of the prerogative of Canterbury. What of the j u s metrofoliticum ? Its immediate piivileges and duties arose in connection with the conduct of vacant sees, the visitation of the dioceses in his province, the presidency of the provincial synod or council, together &th the of those who did not attend, the preservation of orthodox doctrine against Lollardy, the making and upholding of provincial constitutions, the transmission to the clergy of requests and commands from the king. All these activities find their way into the Archbishop's register. It is clear that Chichele firmly upheld hisjus; and constitutional questions for a moment apart, there are personal touches here and there in his record which show what a determined sort of man was dominus noster. It may seem strange to us that he should summon the vicars of two St. Albans churches, St. Peters and Watford, for not ex- hibiting due respect to him by failing to ring the bells when he came southwards through that area in 14 1 4 ; ' but what was at stake was his metropoIitan's power against a great exempt jurisdiction. The issue came up again over an incident at Barnet in 1426. The St.

' Reg. Chichele, ii, fol. 284. The case in which Lyndwood was involved was against Thomas Bercley for the prebend of Hundreton in Hereford Cathedral Cf: fol 285 v.

a Ibid., ii, fol. 284 v. ' Ibid., ii, fol. 294 v.


Albans writer reports that j ro j ier non julsationem canzfanamm the Archbishop sealed the doors of the church, but that the archdeacon of St. Albans gleefully removed the seal and passed freely in.' Such conduct could not be winked at ; while on a week's visit to St. Albans that year Chichele came to an agreement with the abbot on the question of the revereniialia: the bells were to be rung and pro- cessions formed when the Archbishop passed through any place in the liberty of St. Albans : in other respects the rights of the exempt jurisdiction were to be respected? hat indeed did not absolve the abbot from the duty of attending Convocation. Chichele was particularly insistent upon this point, especially with the prelates of the religious orders. Both in 141 6 and 141 7 he had to declare his intention of ~ r o c e e d i n ~ against all who, tanguam jlii alieni et degeneres, failed to appear. In 141 6 a good number of the greater abbots, including those of Tewkesbury, Ramsey, Reading, Cirencester and Sherborne had to seek absolution fro non ~ofizfaricione.~ H e could soften at times, as for instance when he forgave the bishop of Lon- don's commissary for not sending out the writs of summons in proper time, and imposed no penalty upon him: But the tears which he allowed to flow on certain occasions, notably when he pleaded for the abolition of the Statute of Provisors in January, 1428, were his servant rather than his master. In the Convocation of December, 1428, the assembly in which, after a great round-up of Lollards, the prelates of the religious were asked whether they would receive heretics into their prisons, Chichele had before him an obstinate fellow, Ralph Mungyn, who had been four months in the Fleet. When he refused to abjure his opinions the Archbishop exhorted him " tearfully and most merci- fully," as one suspected of error and heresy, to make the declaration. In the margin the scribe has written the comment : "crocodile's tears.''

T h e Archbishop, as we saw, had to provide for the spiritual needs of a see when it fell vacant. In the case of London, Lincoln, Salis- bury and Worcester, as Miss Graham has pointed out.,' during the

' " Liberrime pertransiit " : A?nundeshant, Annales, i, 7. Reg. Chichele, ii, fol. 364 v. This is wrongly attributed by the editor

of the St. Albans Chronicler to 1423 ; Anzundesham, i, 3. Reg. Chichele, ii, fol. 10. Ibid., ii, fol. 12 v. " Crocodili lachryme " : ii, fol. 73.

T r a n s . Roy. Hist. Soc. 4th ser. vol. xii, p. 50.


thirteenth century the Cathedral Chapters had made compositions with the metropolitan giving them a voice in the appointment of the diocesan official and a share in the administration during the vacancy. Such was not the case with Coventry and Lichfield, the first see in Chichele's long pontificate to fall vacant (1 41 4). There he appointed his own representatives (two canons of the Cathedral), a sequestrator and a penitenciary-general. On receipt of the commission the senior canon, Walter Bullock, immediately went to take possession of the episcopal palace in the Close, and received from the late bishop's executor the keys of the gate and of the other buildings within the palace.' In the consistory court, where he sat from month to month, Bullock made the advocates and proctors take the oath of obedience to the Archbishop. The administration began with a visitation of the prior and convent and the several archdeaconries. It is interesting to note that when the Archbishop's commissary was visiting the priory, he went home to take his midday meal and paid for it hiiself (nota f r o jure domini is the scribe's marginal comment) ; for, as the register observes, every ordinary in visiting the Cathedral Church could choose whether he would take his procuration in food and drink, or in ten marks? Bullock (was he a northerner ?) chose to take the money and pay for the food eaten. A fair proportion of this sede vacnnte register is occupied with the election of Benedicta Pryde by compromise to be abbess of Polesworth ; wills are responsible for several folios, but the bulk of it is concerned with ordinations, institutions and exchanges. It is worth noting that the Archbishop had, by devolution, the right of collating to free chapels in the diocese. The next vacant see administered by Chichele was Norwich, for the first time (as there were two vacancies) on the death of Richard Courtenay at Harfleur in September, 141 5. Here the officials deputed were William Westacre and Chichele's own familiaris, Matthew Assheton. Assheton took the oath as official for Norwich in the great chamber of Saltwood Castle ; he took it " according to the form of a composition long made between the holy Church of Canterbury and Norwich over the exercise of jurisdiction in the bishopric of Norwich as often as it shall happen to be vacant " - o n e more special case to add to Miss Graham's list. It worked thus : the

Reg. Chichele, ii, fol. 1 1 8. a Ibid., ii, fol. 120.


Archbishop was to exercise all the jurisdiction possessed by the bishop of Norwich during the vacancy, excepting visitation of the chapter, city and diocese of Norwich, and the inquiry and punishment of offences discovered there ; for their own visitation the chapter had the right of presenting to the Archbishop, within a fortnight from the beginning of the vacancy, three persons, from whom the Archbishop should select one. This they did, and Chichele appointed William Silton, monk of the Cathedral Church, to act vice et auctoritate nostris; while for the visitation of the city and diocese Assheton appointed Master Thomas Fryng.' T h e same procedure in regard to the Chapter took place in 1425, though in this case the Chapter representative visited city and diocese as well, and was commissioned not by the official but by the Archbi~hop.~ It is worth noting that the awkward questions on poor benefices which we noted as being asked by the Exchequer in 1416 were duly put by Chichele to his official Assheton, and one other interesting entry shows us the prior and convent of Wymundham protesting against being made collectors of the subsidy against an earlier royal concession to the mother house of St. Albans exempting her and her daughter houses from any such obligation. The third vacancy was Salisbury : on the death of Hallum (4 Sept., 14 17), in accordance with the composition made between Boniface of Savoy and the chapter, the dean (Chandler) and chapter presented three canons from whom Chichele was to select : Simon Sydenham, Richard Ullerston and Robert Brown : ' Sydenham, as we know from the commissions, was his choice.' Hereford, administered in 141 6, had no such rights : the commission to John, one of its canons, is the only part of this section preserved. Chichester in 141 5,' besides its newly appointed officials (a local canon and one of Chichele's clerics, the dean of the collegiate church of South Malling), had its sequestrator appointed not by the Archbishop direct, as at Coventry and Lichfield, but by the keepers of spiritualties as szsbdelegatus; and neither of the keepers sat in the consistory of Lewes, but appointed a substitute for that purpose T h e first Chichester se& vacante register is the fullest and most interesting of those we possess : it runs from July, 14 1 5, to May, 14 18, and besides

' Reg. Chichele, ii, fol. 150, 150 v. Ibid., ii, fol. 22 1 v. Ibid., ii, fol. 18 1 f.

* Ibid., ii, fol. 272 v. "bid., ii, fol. 188.


the visitation of the keepers and a very full group of institutions which includes a complete list of the canons of Chichester, it contains the majority of ecclesiastical legislation passed in Convocation during these years. The second vacancy of Chichester in the Archbishop's time occurred in 1429.' There is little need to add that in the matter of patronage the king did well out of the repeated vacancies of that diocese. W e might also note that throughout these registers the Archbishop was able to secure a pretty uniform system of entry and registration. His method of joining one of his specially intimate famiZiares with the local official appointed helped to secure this end.

The right of the Archbishop to visit the sees of his suffragans and to take procurations there is one of the most firmly grounded of metropolitical rights. Such a visitation in Chichele's time undoubtedly caused some excitement in the diocese selected for visitation, and even after five hundred years the anticipation of amusing, if somewhat discreditable, conqerta still whets the student's appetite. But the record of Chichele's visitations, just as it refuses to satisb a passion for significant detail, fails likewise-dnzcdelur adtissimus, as his scribe remarked-to gratify a taste for the scandalous. The sees visited were Canterbury (1 4 1 3, both ordinary and metropolitical) ; Rochester (1 41 8), Chichester and Salisbury (1 423). The records are very short. No articles of inquiry are given, but much can be gleaned from the returns made by the officials of the archdeaconries or by the heads of religious houses as to the nature of the questions put. The Archbishop comes to examine the title of all incumbents, to investigate the moral and financial condition of the cathedral church, the archdeaconries and the religious houses, and to correct by injunction and penance the errors revealed by his questions. Like the justice in eyre his presence suspended all other judicial processes whatsoever, unless (as was normally done) he gave letters dimissory to the arch- deacons, permitting them to exercise their usual functions, saving always the correction of matters detected on his visit. " And know," wrote his clerk when Chichele was going through Sarum, " that from the day on which the bishop of Salisbury received the writs our lord archbishop exercised all manner of spiritual and ecclesiastical jurisdiction." No one was permitted to '' attempt" anything to the pejudice of those metropolitical rights.

Reg. Chichele, ii, 241 f. Ibid., ii, fol. 258 v.


T h e visitation of the religious houses offers most points of interest. T h e Archbishop freely exercised his right to change the obedienti- aries-to "exonerate *' them, as the phrase went A t Bysham Montague, in the diocese of Salisbury, he found Edmund Redyng the cellarer so occupied with his duties that he could not attend to the office of sub-prior, which he held concurrently. Chichele "by his metropolitical authority exonerated him from the office of cellarer and onerated him with the care of religion." ' A t Abingdon he exonerated brother Ralph Hamur of his offices of kitchener, woodman and keeper of the Trinity : a evidently the brother could not attend both to the altar as well as to the provisioning. These " exonerations " raise some important questions of internal organization. Ofices seem to have been duplicated more freely than the archbishop considered desirable. But at Abingdon there were more serious faults and the

I registrar's clerk specially noted it along with Abbotsbury, Maiden Bradley and Bysham as one of the places needing reform.' Chichele did not allow it enough time on his visit as originally planned to give his injunctions : places where offences detected were not serious could be dealt with cajitulariter, that is by the Archbishop giving his own admonitions orally to the monks assembled in their chapter house ; to Abingdon longer instructions were written and sent in November, after the Archbishop's return ; they had to be

, written in the various books normally read in the hour of chapter and proclaimed aloud at least once a year in October. They are sane, thoughtful instructions, framed for a community that had fallen into serious condition both spiritually and temporally. T h e abbot, who in other respects evidently a weak character, had been an acceptor of persons and his conduct had led to the growth of conventuula, caucuses within the house, and a consequent crop of delationes or tales told by irresponsible and over-busy persons. Chichele took measures to silence the hum of scandal ; one of his injunctions was to forbid all messing in special or private rooms, where such discord was specially fomented over drink4

If we are wandering far from our authors it is because their interest lay less in the administrator than in the political figure that

' Reg. Chichele, ii, fols. 255, 255 v. Ibid., ii, fol. 256 v. Ibid., ii, fol. 258 v. ' Ibid., ii, fols. 258 v, 259.

3 0


had to hold his own with Bedford, Beaufort and other members of the Council, to say nothing of the Pope. Each at the end comes back to the liberality of his final years. Each comments on his concern for the promotion of University graduates, and the Dean gives a sympathetic but erroneous account of the measures taken in Convocation to that end. From a letter printed in Mr. Anstey's Epistolae Aca&micae we know that the gratitude of Oxford was not diminished by the fact that Chichele realized how difficult it was to secure an agreed scheme for promotion without asking the University to relax its statutes on degrees in favour of the religious? When such a scheme was eventually forthcoming, the records of Convoca- tion show that the bishops were very slow in giving effect to it.a The problem of getting a job (in a benefice) was as hard for the young master or bachelor then as it is for the student who has passed through the Final Honour Schools to-day. But the Archbishop was also concerned with the problem from an earlier stage : he was anxious, as his prologue to his statutes of All Souls has it, to help the militia of this country in his own small way, spi~.ituaZiter ved temjoraliter 2

for, as he explains, he was full of sadness when he contemplated the state of " that unarmed clerical army, because of want at home and the other miseries of this world that daily decayeth, as well as when he beheld the general disease of his secular army, greatly diminished by the wars between England and France" ; the more so as he recollected how Church and State alike had made England formidable to her adversaries and splendid among the nations abroad. The harmony of the two powers in the creation of a greater England was hi ideal, and we must not pour too much scorn on the Tudor historians who emphasized his nationalism. The ideas of Henry V were still a powerful force long after his death. The distinction between the national sentiment of the fifteenth and that of the sixteenth century is that the sixteenth laid emphasis on the predominance of the secular power in the building of the island state. while the fifteenth looked to the balanced co-operation of both "militias." Perhaps Sir Thomas

' Oxford Hist. Soc., i, 22-24. For the thorny subject of the promotion of graduates see Reg. Chichele, ii, fols. 1 1 v, 13 v, 16, 26 v, 27-28, 105, 1 06- 108.

Epistolae Academicae, i, 1-2, though relating to the first scheme for promotion authorized by Convocation, shows the difficulty.


Moore is the last great representative of that fifteenth-century concordance.

W e need not dwell with the dean on the foundation of St. Bernard's College, with its gate-house into St. Giles, so closely re- sembling the later structure of the Archbishop in the High Street. H e is right in emphasizing Chichele's love of collegiate life, seen in his creation of the beautiful Bede House and the College, now a distinguished skeleton, in Higham Ferrers ; there is more to be added about the part that Wingham and South Mailing took, under his guidance, in the diocesan life of Canterbury ; but Oxford is now the theme, and Chichele had before him, in his Register, the record of Richard Hemming's union in 1429 of St. Mildred's and St. Michael's into All Saints, and the appointment of a rector and a certain number of Fellows and Scholars to form the College of the Blessed Mary and All Saints of Lincoln in Oxford.' What we know about that remarkable Papalist bishop suggests that the foundation was not uncopnected with the desire to combat unorthodox opinions by the spread of sound doctrine, and this the statutes for Lincoln bear out. Chichele, on the other hand, was as much concerned with strengthening the practical and vocational studies of the University, the Canon and the Civil Law, which, as he says in the statutes for All Souls, are $6 useful and necessary in politics and government." W e can imagine Lyndwood writing the sentence for him. The division of artists (24) and jurists (1 6) among the Fellows and Scholars of his new foundation of "the souls of all the faithful departedw befitted a place whose spiritual purpose was to pray for the monarch and the men that had fallen in the service of the State. The association of Henry VI as co-founder set the seal on this public aspect of the College, besides facilitating the process of its partial endowment with the lands of the alien priories. How Alberbury, which belonged to the Order of Crandmont, came into the hands of the College in 1441 has been already related by Miss By 1447 the priory of Romney and the rectory of Upchurch (Kew), that belonged to the house of St. Mary a2 Insula Dei (Normandy), and the priories of St. Clere and Llangenith in Pembrokeshire had been made over to Richard Andrew,

' Reg. Chichele, ii, fols. 290 v., 291. The consent of the Archdeacon of Oxford, the last stage in the process, was given in 1438.

English Ecclesiastical Studies (1 929), p. 209 f.


the first Warden, to add to the profitable Bedford and Buckingham manors of Long Crendon, Salford, Morton and Foxcote, and the Middlesex estates of Edgeware, Kingsbury and Willesden. Some future historiiin of the College must tell the story of these endowments. A splendid store of charters lies to his hand.

The statutes show that the Founder had much of Wykeham's spirit of discipline and mastery of detail. The order of places at table, the regulation of commons by the price of bread, even the duties of the steward of the week are minutely set down ; everywhere Latin is to be used ; in it " modesto et curiali mod0 loquantur," though the Latin rule might be relaxed in the presence of strangers or laymen. As a good New College man Chichele made many borrowings from Wykeham's Statutes ; one of the most obvious concerns the library, then divided into the chained or " confined " books and the supply for circulation, given out annually at the " elections." l Neither of our authors have been specially interested in the learned purpose of the foundation, though the dean significantly notes that the chapel was consecrated to the memory of the four doctors of the Church. The two earliest lists of books in the library, both of them contained in inventories of Chichele's gifts to the college, bear out the importance attached by Chichele to Jerome, Augustine and Gregory.' The year after the foundation Cascoigne gave his copy of Gregory's register to the Colleges a splendid twelfth-century volume (there was another copy as well), while the sermons and the moralia are well represented. The letters of Jerome figured prominently ; they were kept, when the lectern system was fully developed, chained like Nicholas de LyraVs Postils on the centre desk in the communis libraria, which had eight lecterns on either side, one group for theology and arts, the other for law. Henry VI gave a fine copy of Eusebius' Eccdes~astical History, which, like Gascoigne's Gregory, still survives among the College manuscripts.' Among the more interesting arts books are the Com- mentary of Peter of Candia on the Sentences, Burley on the Ethics, Sharpe on the Physics and Thomas Netter of Walden's great Doctrinale. The collection of Canon Law can only be1 described as

'For the system cf. F. M. Powicke, The Medieval Books of Merton College, pp. 12- 18.

Appendix, infra, pp. 470, 47 1. B17tf~a, pp. 470, 471. * Infra, pp. 470, 47 1.


remarkable. Besides the usual collections of canons, I have noted works by Codfrey de Fontibus, Antonio de Butrio, Zabarella and John Calderiii The volumes of law for circulation amounted to nearly seventy. It is pleasant to find a Canterbury rector, John Lovelych,' leaving some of his legal texts in his will to his patron's ~ollege.~ There was a considerable chained collection of astronomy and medicine. There was also a large miscellaneous class of theology and medical work for distribution. When one contrasts this early list with the contents of the Merton library, one can see how strongly practical was Chichele's vision : the library is a good, all- round working collection, not an assemblage of specialist theology and philosophy. Most of it seems to have been collected for the College by the Archbishop himself : in several cases the donor's name is mentioned. Peter Partridge, for example, gave a number of works on logic and metaphysics. In the vestibule of the chapel were kept the antiphonals, graduals and other works for divine service, which the ~ r c h b i i h o ~ prexnted ; and there too was stored the magnificent collection of vestments, of which we have full particulars,' together with the altar cloths-the frontal and superfrontal of red silk, the frontal with the white lambs, the "cloths of white worsted steyned, with angels holding in their hands Emanuel." W e cannot enumerate here the images, the relics, the organ, the bells, the bronze eagle given by Thomas Chichele, and the secular jewels and treasures which the Archbishop placed in the hands of the custos jocadium. There is enough to make a stout appendix to any early history of the College ; certainly the vestments should find their way into any treatise on opus AngZicanum : the details could surely find illustration from elsewhere.

W e said above that Chichele was deeply concerned about the poverty of scholars in the University. Mr. Cibson*s recent edition of the Statutes has given us the full text, from Register F., of the regula- tions made by Congregation in 1432 for the fund which he established for aiding Colleges or individuals. The ordinance for the Chichele Chest4 states that out of compassion for the poverty of masters and

He was at first rector of St. Martin outside the Walls (Reg. Chichele, i, fol. 107). and later instituted as rector of St. Alphege (ibid., i, fol. 1 72).

Ibid., i, fol. 464 v. ' Archives of All Souls CoII., Misc. nos. 209, 2 10. " Quam cistam, ex eiusdem reuerendissimi patris cognomine speciali,

Cistam Chichele Anglice Chichele Wyche pro perpetuo nominare, ac dictas


students at the University of Oxford the Archbishop had established a fund of two hundred marks, out of which loans could be made under the direction of two regent and one non-regent masters, to those requiring assistance. From it the University might borrow, on a single occasion, a hundred shillings, or a college five marks ; a regent or non-regent master studying in the University, forty shillings ; a licentiate in any faculty, two and a half marks ; a bachelor two marks, and a scholar one mark. All with reasonable security,' and no sums to go out unless the recipient had repaid any previous loan made by the chest.' For this the Archbishop was enrolled among the benefactors of the University, and his name was to be read aloud " when the priest goes round the schools of the several masters to pray for the benefactors of the Universityw ; and each recipient was to undertake to pray, while the Archbishop still lived, for his good estate, and after his death, for his soul and "the souls of all benefactors of the said chest and all the faithful departed." The remembrance of his University and his College is still his reward.

CC marcas in utilitatem magistrorum et scholarium in universitate predicta studenuum per viam mutui conuerti volumus secundum modum et formam per nos (the chancellor and regent masters) ordinatos et subscriptos " : S. Gibson, Statuta Anhqua Universitatis Oxoniensis, p. 249. For the thanks of the University, cf. Epistolae Academicae, i, 74-75.

' Which might be books, deposited by the recipient OF the loan, at the chest. For an example, cf. Powicke, op. a?., p. 17.

"ibson, op. not., p. 250.

APPENDIX.

AN EARLY BOOK LIST OF ALL SOULS COLLEGE1

AU Souls College Archives, Miscellanea, No. 2 10. Shortly after 1 440. Heading :- Hec sunt bona data Collegio animarum omnium fidelium

defunctorum in Oxonia per Reuerendissimum in Christo patrem et dominum, dominum Henricum Chichele permis- sione diuina Cantuariensem Archiepiscopum, fundatorem Collegii predicti. Qui vero aliquid eomndem a predict0 Collegio contra statuta dicti fundatoris alienauerit Anathema sit amen.

Endorsement :- Communis indentura ornnium bonorum Collegii. m e list begins on rn. 2 of the roll and forms the right-hand column.]

LIBRI THEOLOGIE CATHENATI. [m- 21 Biblia 2" fol. -ba di-.

Una concordancia 2" fol. sicut vestimentium. Magister historiarum 2' fo. quia trement. Magister historiarum 2" fo. festinaui ad. Prima pars Lire 2" fo. Ziber et. 2a pars 2" fo. pronunn'atum est. Lira super nouum testamentum 2" fo. fatearisque. 3a pars Lire 2" fo. non est in eo. Ysydems super Pentateuchum 2" b. videt hic. Gorram super iiij"' Evangelia 2" fo. Christiper adopnbnem. Liber de signis biblie 2" fo. etfinaliter. Thomas super Lucam et Johannem 2" fo. esse nemo. Bonauentura super Lucam et Johannem 2" fo. non dienum. Liber xii prophetarum postillaris 2" fo. annis xv. Glosa ordinaria super Ysayam 2" fo. ergo padens. Glosa super I Genesii 2' fo. que nostra est. Exposicio super apocalypsim 2" fo. in prima. Radulphus super apocalypsima 2' fo. Zoquente. Glosa communis super psalterium 2" fo. -tubus non. Closa communis super psalterium 2" fo. i tque. Job glosatus 2" fo. omnigenere.

My thanks are due to the College for permission to print this extract. Radulphus Flaviacensis. Cf. All Souls Coll. MS. XIII, Flaviacensis

on Leviticus, given by Warden Hoveden. 469


Flores psalterii 2" fo. in Aebreo. Postilla super Johannem 2" fo. secundum tamen. Augustinus super psalmo Lotx 2" fo. si vikit. Augustinus in melleloquio 2" fo. de trinitate. Augustinus de Ciuitate 2" fo. de pudore. Augustinus de Verbis domini 2" fo. sevmo eiusdem. Augustinus in suo encherideon a 2" fo. -timus colendum. Augustinus de quantitate 2" fo. -lium vobntaria. Augustinus de trinitate 2" fo. -ens& absconditur. Augustinus de trinitate 2" fo. scvtptura diuina. Bernardus super cantica 2" fo. dzflerente. Bernardus super missus estS 2O fo. conpum. Diuerse epistole leronimi 2" fo. vinn'tpuhr. Ieronimus contra Rufinum 2" fo. impietatis. Omelie Cregorii 2" fo. Jacobus alter. Cregorius in Registro ' 2" fo. patimur. Gegorius super cantica 2" fo. vocal. Prima pars Gegorii in moralibus 2" fo. upuirentes. 2" pars eiusdern 2' fo. nesn't pui. 3" pars eiusdem 2" fo. illius in desperatione. Prima pars moralium cum tabula 2" fo. in textu conuictione. Parisiensis super Dominicales 2" fo. adzlenturn. Distinctiones Holcote 2" fo. sapiens non. Dicta Lincolniensis 2" fo. Ziberias et melius. Casterton super apocalypsim 2" fo. vevo puia accz'dit. Epistole Ysidori 2" fo. carnium. Dicta salutis 2" fo. in k c tanpuam. Ysidorus de summo bono 2" fo. inest ei. Prima pars Waldensis q0 fo. nostre patrone. 2" pars eiusdem in textu per aduentum. Reuelationes Brygitte 2" fo. 0 vere slupenda. lnnocentius de pontificis et ~cerdotis ofIicio 2" fo. domine leuite. Parisiensis de virtutibus 2" fo. sobrielatis. Stephanus Cantuariensis 2" fo. Hebrei non. Beda de gestis Anglorum 2" fo. quibushm. Malmesbury de gestis Anglorum 2" fo. soknt. Omelie Eusebii 2" fo. et amims carus.

Melliloquio. Cf. Oxf. Hist. Soc. Colledanea, iii, 232. ' 1.e. Enchiidion. ' Cf. M. R James, The Ancz'ent Libraries of Canterbury and Dover,

p. 65. 'AU Souls Coll. MS. XVIII, given to the College by Dr. Thomas

Gascoigne and much used by him for his Liber Veritatum. SC. epistolas. Willliam of Auvergne. Thomas Netter oC Walden. This is the first part of his Dochainale, the

" second part" being the " De Sacramentis," mentioned below and in a later list (All Souls Coll. Archives, Vellum Inventory, fol. 23 v).


Eusebius in ecclesiastica historia 2' fo. in tabula in mnatibus.' Monologium Anselmi 2' fo. cum ig2 . t~~ . Rabanus a de mistico signo rerum 2' Arcium. Flores historiarum cum specula stuItorum 2" fo. puia Abraham. Rosarium theologicum 2" fo. -sionis culpe. Petrus in auroraY 2" fo. nam quasi. Caton glosatus 2" fo. inszlper vevo. Liber Florum 2" fo. quid tves. Liber de emendacione vite 2" fo. cunctapue. Januensis in opere quadragesimali 2" fo. -silia populi. Magister summarum 2" fo. in tabula an posse. Magister summarum 2' fo. -ata. Thomas in 2a parte summe 2' fo. mathematice. Thomas in 2a secunde 2" fo. sipovum. Thomas de Christo 2' fo. necessavii. Thomas in prima parte summa 2' musicus accepit. Thomas in 2a parte rmmme 2" fo. cui attribuuntuv. Bonauentura super primum et quartum 2" fo. enim est. Thomas de veritatibus theologie 2" fo. Gvegis. Petrus de Candia super libro sententiarum 2' fo. cambuttt. Bradwardinus de causa dei 2" fo. bonum et malum. 2a pars eiusdem 2" fo. sit vemm. Januensis 2" fo. nunyuam. . Januensis 2' fo. scvibuntuv. Unum pontificale in duobus voluminibus 2" fo. prime partis, ea recornpensave, 2" fo. 2e partis, ovdo adfinem. * Burley super libros ethicorum 2" fo. ideo sub. Opus Albet i ti 2' fo. cavnem. Scharpe super libros physicorurn 2" fo. sine illa. Burley super libros physicorum 2" fo. physicos. . Egidius de celo et mundo 2" fo. divenn'o. Textus philosophie 2" fo. -sem et statu. Textus logice 2' fo. mnt. Textus logice 2" fo. et de pavticulavibus. Gregorius in Registro 2' fo. omnium atpge. Augustinus 2" fo. inmltave. Tabula moralis philosophie 2" fo. quia d. Bromyard 2" fo, debet esse. Crisostomus super Matheum 2" fo. eius rmdiretur.

' All Souls Coll. MS. XLVI, given by Henry VI to the College. ' In tabula ' - in the table of contents. Fo. 2 begins ' e cruciatibus.'

' Rabanus Maurus. ' The Aurora of Petrus de Riga.

In another hand. Probably his Super libros de anima : All Souls Coll. Archives,

Vellum Inventory, fol. 27 v.


Hodilstone ' super ~salterium 2" fo. ad literam. Holcote super sapientiam in tabula constructam.

LIBRI IURIS CANONICI CATHENATI.

[m. 1 d.1 Liber decretorum 2" fo. facultas. Liber decretorum 2" fo. pont$cum. Archidiaconus in Rosario 2" fo. ex eodem. Archidiaconus in Rosario 2" fo. iustius. Tabula super decreta 2" fo. cautela. Lectura Johannis de fantutiis,' 2" fo. 2 3 4. 2a pars eiusdem 2" fo. ceaht li~~zitato. Petrus de Salinis 2" fo. -fendendo. Petrus de Salinis 2" fo. de crimine.

[after a considerable space blank.]

Decretalia 2" fo. -natissimam. Decretalia 2" fo. Dampnamus. Summa Goffridi a 2" fo. quod non. Summa Roff ridi 2" fo. demeto. lnnocentius 2" fo. -di C. Innocentius 2" fo. et infia. Hostiensis in summa 2" fo. qualiter. Hostiensis in 2a parte 2" fo. naturalis. Hostiensis in lectura 2" fo. fatuum est. Hostiensis in 2a parte 2" fo. visitat. Hostiensis in lectura 2O fo. alia allkanda. Hostiensis in 2a parte 2" fo. debet ren9eve. Johannes in novella 2" fo. ultra id. Johannes in novella in 2a parte 2" fo. si recz9iunt. Johannes in novella 2" fo. qzlod est. Johannes in collecta 2" fo. prime partis vel vj. 2a pars eiusdem 2" fo. cum eo. Johannes de Ly[niano] ' 2" fo. attendi. 2a pars eiusdem 2" fo. tendit ad. Karolus de Zambucariis 2" fo. Johannes an-. Antonius de Butrio super 2" libro 2" fo. se reputant. Zabrellus super iiij decretalium6 2" fo. ditto C.

' Richard Ullerston, Canon of Salisbury, formerly Chancellor of Oxford. There is a copy of this in Lord Mostyn's Manuscripts, no. 70 : Hist. MSS. Comm., 4th Rept., Appendix, p. 349.

John of Fantuui, on the Clementiies. For John, cf. Schulte, Gesch. d Quellen und Lit. der Canonischen Rechts, ii, 265-6.

Codfrey de Fontibus SuppIied from list in All Souls Coll. Misc. 209. ' SC. Decretalium.

Decret' in MS. This might be Zabarella's Commentaria in q u i n q ~ libros &metaliurn (Schulte, ii, 284).


Johannes in novella super speculum 2" fo. ut ibi sm)si. Tabula super decreta 2" fo. monstravi. Distinctiones Johannis Calderini 2" fo. defendere. Speculum 2" fo. et multi. Speculum 2" fo. docuerunt. Hostiensis abreuiatus 2" fo. Religiosi. Sextus cum Johanne Cardinali dyaconol 2" fo. in confessione. Sextus cum eisdem 2" fo. kuius. Johannes in mercurialibus super quibusdam regulis iuris 2" fo. lzabetur. Petrus de Ancorano 2" fo. yuerit circa. Idem in alio volumine super Clementinis 2' fo. d i d . Petrus de Ancorano 2" fo. -tario regis. Clernentine cum Johanne W. G. et pana 2" fo. z)se tamen. Clementine cum eisdem doctoribus 2" fo. mum motum. Constitutiones Johannes xxij notate per Gofhidum 2" fo. a canonibus Summa Rapundi de casibus 2" fo, est annexum. Willelmus in sacramentis 2" fo. -tank regis. Petrus de Ancorano 2" fo. de prelatione. Johannes Andreae 2" fo. inctpit.

LIBRI IURIS CIUILIS CATHENATI.

Paruum volumen 2" fo. rerum cotidianamm. Paruum volumen 2" fo. turn ab unnb. Johannes Fabri 2" fo. d i d Azo. Johannes Fabri 2' fo. Ckristi qui. Johannes de PIatea 2" fo. lzoc nouum. 2a pars eiusdem 2" fo. in glossa. Jacobus de Bello Visu 2" fo. sic Zoquitu~. Tabula iuris 2" fo. baal.

[rn. 2 d.] Codex 2" fo. cmnposicionem. Codex 2" fo. mare prospeximus. Odofredus 2" fo. libri 2. 2a pars eiusdem 2" fo. et retineo. Cynus 2" fo. de decurionibus. Cynus 2" fo. et ideo. Prima pars Baldi 2" fo. non eris. 2a pars eiusdem 2" fo. quia potest. Digesturn vetus 2" fo. nouum. Digesturn vetus 2" fo. licet admergi. O d e M u s 2" fo. intelkgenti. Prima pars eiusdem 2" fo. de urn cam. 2a pars eiusdem 2" fo. in iure. Jacobus de Botzing * 2" fo. conslletudino.

'MS., " Car dy," underlined. Misc. 209, l1 Cardiili ar(chidiacon0) et diacono."

1.e. Panormitano. Wf Auvergne.


Petrus in repetitionibus 2" fo. consuetudinario. Digestum infordatum 2" fo. -YO eius. Digestum inforciaturn 2O fo. ez die. Reynerius 2" fo. solute. Additiones Eyny 2" fo. de heredibusjustis. Jacobus de Rauennis' 2" fo. koc dicit. Digestum nouum 2" fo. predii. Digestum nouum 2" fo. opida. Azo cum RofFredo 2" fo. de kevetiak. Judidale iuris 2" fo. superiorem. Bartholomeus super prima parte Digesti noui 2" fo. ut restituas. Jacobus de Ravanis super Codice 2" fo. in Anglia. Tractatus Baldi 2" fo. non de deo. Bartholomeus super Codice 2O fo. nec dicitur. Prima pars Bartholomei super prima parte Digesti inforciati cum

diuersis tractatibus 2" fo. sed quid. Prima pars eiusdem super eodem 2" fo. supra de iure de. Bartholomeus super Decreto nouo 2" fo. siplamerit. Bartholomeus super Decreto inforciato 2" fo. prizcilegium. Bartholomeus super Decreto Veteri 2" fo, hic la. Consilia Frederici 2" fo. de hiis. Belyall' 2" fo. p i s ibit.'

LIBRI IURIS DISTRIBUENDI.a Decreta 2" fo. adiniLnt. Archidiaconus in Rosario 2" fo. omnis. Johannes de Deo 2" fo. et dicituv pod. Decretalia 2" fo. kabent substantiam. Decretalia 2" fo. sacro. Decretalia 2" fo. in unum. Decretalia 2" fo. etfilius. Decretale 2" fo. illudpotissimum. Decretale 2" fo. ecclest'e. Decretale 2" fo. nolo inquiens. Decretale 2" £0. singulis. Innmentius 2" fo. sicut tres. Innocentius 2" fo. fadendurn. Inrocentius 2" fo. sm$tunz est. Innmentius 2" fo. -kro fierent. Goffridus 2" fo. de simon'. Compostelanus cum repertorio W. Durant' 2" fo. teneris. Hostiensis in lectura 2" fo. sumpsit.

Cf. F. M. Powicke. The Medieval Books of Mevton College, p. 207 - -

(no. 973). a The left-hand column contains the canon law circulating books down to

" Repertonurn 2" to. per archidiaconum " ; the remainder of the column and the centre the civil law.


Hostiensis in summa 2" fo. huizcs glose. Tabula super decretalibus 2" fo. verbL continetur. 2a pars eiusdem 2" fo. nzalicia. Chelyngtonl super decretis 2" fo. et sic. Sextus 2' fo. declaranbne. Sextus 2" fo. -ventem. Sextus cum doctoribus q0 fo. in quo istud. Johannes Andreae super vj 2" fo. vocatus. Johannes super viO 2" fo. x ~ k di-. Quidem rubeus liber 2" fo. primal;. Archidiaconus super vj 2" fo. jape. Clementine 2" fo. Clen~ens episcopus. Clementine 2" fo. spiritum perfovare. Clementine 2" fo. iwzmaculata. Chelyngden' 2" fo. et alia conclusio. Summa Goffridi 2" fo. quasi. Summa Goffridi 2" fo. prioris. Goffridus cum casuario Bernardi 2" fo. Resn+tum. Repertoriurn Baldi super Innocentium 2" fo. abbas. Speculum 2" fo. complicuit. Speculum 2" fo. Ordo. Repertorium W. Durandi 2' fo. senes. Repertorium 2" fo. per archidiaconum. Instituta 2" fo. seruientes. Instituta 2" fo in generis. Instituta 2" fo. scv2ptum. Inshtuta 2' fo. co~/ectum. Instituta 2" fo. sed et quodprinn2i. Instituta 2' fo. etjrma. Instituta 2" fo. constituebat. Paruum volumen 2" fo. et elements. Paruum volumen 2" fo. -sz)tentibus. Paruum volurnen 2" fo. scr@tum ius. Paruum volumen 2" fo. -libet preceptis. Paruum volumen 2" fo. commissario. Paruum volumen 2" fo. -9onsa pvudentum. Paruum volumen 2" fo. iuvis precepts. Paruum volumen 2" fo. situm est. Codex 2" fo. -ris veteris. Codex 2' fo. iurk doctor. Codex 2" fo. sanctitaiem. Codex 2" fo. -stores.

'Dr. Thomas Chillendon, prior of Christ Church, Canterbury. a " Cum suis doctoribus," Misc. 209.

Here begin the circulating books on Civil Law. In Misc. 209 the list is headed (a separate column) " Libri iuris civilis distribuendi."

* Here the centre column begiis.

476 THE JOHN RYLANDS LIBRARY Codex 2" fo. optulermnt. Codex 2" fo. kuic igitur. Codex 2" fo. -nem iuris. Codex 2" fo. atpue patrinus. Codex 2" fo. ex qua diuidenb. Codex 2" fo. composite. Digestum vetus 2" fo. -dinem. Digestum vetus 2" fo. doctrinartz. Digesturn vetus 2" fo. de testis. Digestum vetus 2" fo. alterurn. Digestum vetus 2" fo. -dulcerit. Digestum vetus 2" fo. lumine. Digestum vetus 2" fo. diczhr. Digestum vetus 2" fo. fancndissimos. Digesturn vetus 2" fo. promittentibus. Digesturn inforciatum 2" fo. -pue marite. Digesturn inforciatum 2" fo. diuornb facto. Digesturn inforciatum 2" fo. pedicinos. Digestum inforciaturn 2" fo. zltipue. Digesturn inforciatum 2" fo. Julianus. Digesturn inforciatum 2" fo. -ebantur. Digestum inforciatum 2" fo. sifundus. Digestum inforciatum 2" fo. inus diuertit. Digestum inforciatum 2" fo. erit non. Digestum inforciatum 2" fo. maritus. Digesturn nouum 2" fo. -tur opus. Digesturn nouum 2" fo. postea. Digestum nouum 2" fo. ceterum. Digestum nouum 2" fo. -mum sit. Digestum nouum 2 fo. nisi ad $sum. Digestum nouum 2" fo. -terpZures. Digestum nouum 2" fo. omnes dues. Repertorium 2" fo. et ita. 2a pars eiusdem 2" fo. pue sic. Summa abbatis super Digestum nouum 2" fo. D&-estum ad. Johames de Blanasco 2" fo. pr im. Liber de ordine iudiciali 2" fo. eapue. Casuarium super codicem 2" fo. -mbent. Bartholomeus super Digesturn nouum 2" fo. ut restiturn. Bartholomeus Brixensis 2" fo. de censibus.

PHILOSOPHIA CATHENATA.l Im 2 d.1 Burley super libros ethicorurn 2" fo. ideo sub.

Liber ethicorurn 2" fo. i$ur eruditus.

1 Misc. 209 does not contain these items that follow. "n Misc. 209 this heading is given as " Philosophia moralis et naturalis

cathenanda."


Burley 2" fo, philosopk~s. Textus philosophie 2" fo. neyue iam. Exposicio super libros de generatione 2' fo. camem et 0s. Scharpe super viij libro phisicorum cum aliis contentis 2" fo. sum

illis.

LOCICA.'

Unus textus logice 2" fo. in partirularibus. Alius textus logice 2" sunt circa.

ASTRONOMIA.

Johannes de Lyneriis 2" fo. et tunc. Liber nouus iudicis 2" fo. nzutacionem. Liber heremetis de xij signis 2" fo. -les ut. Tractatus spere 2" fo. quatuor cicli. Commendacio antiquorum' 2" fo. et scientes. Quadripartitus Tholomei 2" fo. Etpotest. Astronomia Halsam 2" fo. et si. Summa iudicalis de occidentibus mundi 2" fo. nzergitur. Tholomeus in Almagesti 2" fo. tantigenus. Liber astronomie 2" fo. tabula. Liber astronornie 2" fo. et diuinitas. Canones Azar 2" fo. additus. Liber astronomie 2" fo. habetur. Alecenus in perspectiua 2" fo. -libet. Theorica planetarium 2" fo. sequitur ad s&zovum. Ceometria 2" fo. litters eius.

LIBRI MEDICINE CATHENATI. Nicholaus in antidorio 2" fo. q. C. Almazornis 2" £0. Receptacula. Liber morborum 2" fo. -cianz et. Auicenna 2" fo. capitulum. Dieta uniuersalis 2" fo. quosdam. Rosa medicine 2' fo. isto sanguine. Tegni Calieni 2" fo. recedt. Medicine Ysaak 2" fo. nisi discrecio. Constantinus Viaticus 2" fo. in textu igneis. Ceometria Euclidis cum comment0 2" fo. latera.

Heading in Misc. 209 is " Logics Cathenata." Misc. 209 supplies " sapienturn." La Alsham," Misc. 209. Probably Ibn-al-Haitham or Alacen. See

n. 6 infra. La Accidentibus," Misc. 209. Alacen or Ali ibn Hasan ibn al-Haitham, cf. Powicke, The Medieval

Books of Merton College, p. 1 04.


DIUERSI LIBRI DIUERSARUM FACULTATUM?

Magister aummamm 2" fo. +sum reseratar. Magister historiarum 2" fo. quidem celum. Lincol~Gensis 2" fo. lingua horninis. Exposicio Gilberti super epistolis Pauli 2" fo. intelZ2entiam. Reductorium morale 2" fo. inde tacere. Franciscus PetrarchaB 2" fo. -qae videatur. Euangelium 2" fo. hominibus. Moralitates Job 2" fo. que uti. Vita Scti Johannis Heremite 2" fo. annis. Epistole Pauli glosate 2" fo. stulti facti. Boicius 'de trinitate 2" fo. mirati sunt. Augustinus de trinitate4 2" fo. curam. Lectura super Ysayam 2" fo. generale quod nunquam. Horologium diuine sapienae 2" fo. -libus predictis. Stimulus diuini amoris 2" fo. et propria. Psalterium glosatum 2" fo. propheta de Christo. Vita sancti Malachie 2" fo. Malachiam. Speculum humane salutis 2" fo. -sibafilius. Tractatus de dictamine 2" fo. regranando. Elucidarium 2" fo. siczlt nec infers. Fasciculus morum 2" fo. elistola. Liber de sacris ecclesie 2" fo. pater omnia. Quaternus cum diuersis sennonibus 2" fo. neque tunc. Medicina 2" fo. in modum. Medicina 2" fo. de hiis p i . Medicina 2" fo. cowurnpat. Medicina 2" fo. venas. Medicina 2" fo. pill'. Medicina 2" fo. calidum. Medicina 2" fo. hoc essepotest. Medicina 2" fo. et facta. Medi cina 2" fo. attrahenb. Medicina 2" fo. est validior. Medicina 2" fo. submergit. Medicina 2" fo. dantar. Ypocras 2" fo. utitur. Astronomia 2" fo. sequitur. Astronomia 2" fo. -libuspZanetarmm. Astronomia 2" fo. knebrosos.

1 This combines the lists "libri diuersarum facultatum distribuendi" and 4a Libri theologie distribuendi " of Misc 209.

a4 Deb-archa," Misc. 209, erroneously. Super Job," Misc. 209.

4 written over " ciuitate " erased. Misc. 209 has " ciuitate." ' Sacramentis," Misc. 209.


Astronomia 2" fo. tewea. Methephysica 2" fo. inter duo. Questiones phylosophie 2" fo. tradit sn'entiam. Liber phylosophie 2" fo. finitam. Egidius de celo et mundo 2" fo. seu dimenab. Libellus de ortu scientiarum 2" fo. istam m r ~ . Questiones super libros metaphysice 2" fo. itempro$osi& dizciditur.' Liber philosophie 2" fo. -trice est. Tabula philosophie moralis 2" fo. quomdo erit. Logica Dulmelton' 2" fo. quibus. Predicaments Alyngton' 2" fo. idem nouum. Ouidius in Metamorphoses 2" fo. pena metus. Lucanus de bellis punicis 2" fo. sennaet. Virgilius 2" fo. assia'ue. Ars metrica 2" fo. de clauibus. Geomanicia 2" fo. globo constitutum. Summa logice 2" fo. proprium. D e substantia logice 2' fo. n'rca dz~erena?~. Aristoteles de animabus 2" fo. sejaratur. Textus philosophie 2" fo. inJnihs. Expositorium super eodem 2" fo. perfecturn. Biblia 2" fo. nec scire dknantur. Biblia 2" fo. edi pro aula. Geometric lim 2" fo. sectorem. Astronomic lim 2" fo. capitur.

[After considerabk gap.]

Im. I d] Passionarium sanctorum 2" fo. quam racionabile. Digestum inforciatum 2" fo. virofundum. Digestum vetus 2" fo. sene populus. Allocen' artis perspectiue 2" fo. libet. Psalterium glosatum cum aliis contentis 2" fo. ad literam. Paruum volumen 2" fo. generaliter. Augustinus in diuersis tractatibus 2" fo. quum occidit. Biblia usque Jeremiam 2" fo. e' P' i 1. Bromyard 2" fo. dicitur esse. Porphirius 2" fo. cum specie. Liber artis perspectiue 2" fo. cum ille. Sextus 2" fo. domini aZLetura. Geomancia Gerardi 2" fo. nexit pui inter. Summa Azonis 2" fo. inc2pit. Sextus 2" fo. sinitur viciose. Psalterium Callicum, etc., 2" fo. tunc reges.

' Blurred and uncertain in MS. a Misc. 209 now inserts two " texts " of Logic, but not those mentioned in

210 above. John Dumbleton, Fellow of Merton.

31


Summa uiris canonice 2" fo, dominum nostrum. Liber medicine 2" fo. nisi discrenb. Liber philosophie 2" fo. v d commento. Casuarium super decreta 2" fo. e i t u l i sunt. Liber geomancie 2" fo. paella. Rasid 2" fo. petipne. Liber iudicum 2" fo. ad bonorem. Perspectiua Baconis 2" fo. cum prima ud parta. Crysostomus 2' fo. e i u ostenderetur. Cohedus 2' fo. eius deuocione. De Ixx verbis apostolicis 2" fo. d k i in alio. Capud diaboli 2" fo. annexa. Geomancia 2" fo. negonb. Forma literarum papalium 2' fo. indubitatam. Geometria 2" fo. $unt lius. Alkemia 2" fo. bactenus. Geometria 2" fo. sectorem sicut. Alloced artis perspectiue 2" fo. in loco. Tractatus de wnuersione sancti Pauli cum aliis contentis secundum

Petrum Ulescoute 2" fo. agab.

LIBRI DIUERSARUM FACULTATUM. Decretum 2" fo. Iulie Comelie. Lber cum diuersis wntentis 2" fo. compre.4endere. Rydevaus 2" fo. ascensus. Johannes in addicione 2" fo. inn;bit. Iuuonis 2" fo. poterant. Septuplum 2' fo. fecit verhm. Psalterium glosatum 2" fo. ac noua. kctencius 2" fo. celeste pahlum. Antiquus liber 2" fo. puia varia. Decretalia 2" fo. -nape natura. Sextus 2" fo. ante quorum. Abbas 2" fo. constitunb. Hostiensis in prima parte lecture 2" fo. septima. Decretalia 2" fo. -ue ascendet. Doctor ignotus 2" fo. -creta sunt. C~ementine 2' fo. et essentiafiter. Glosa super Digestum vetus 2" fo. sub condr;rione. Barnardus 2" fo. azcctovizas. Instituta 2" fo. valere. Sextus cum doc(toribus) 2" fo. saZu6ri. Paruum volumen 2" fo. -6antur. Tabula super utroque iure 2" fo. baalxzzz Palladius 2" fo. postea. Quidam doctor super decretalia 2' fo. inter cetera.

Alacen. ? Andreae. For Lactantius.


Innocentius 2" fo. vel ex. Archidiaconus super VI 2" fo. in suis puincipiis. Jacobus de Rauuenna 2" fo. in Anglia. Digestum inforciatum 2" fo. quasi dotis. Paruum volumen 2" fo. ex uaquapue. Digestum nouum 2" fo. opus. Codex 2" fo. dicens. Decretalia 2" fo. consennatur. Conclusio Bal" super innocencium 2" fo. nota de deo. Augustinus de verbis domini 2' fo. sevmo eiusdem. Codex 2" fo. nobis optulevt~nt. Paruum volumen Z0 fo. quasi quo iuve. Innocentius 2" fo. -cz'tate beneficzbrum. Digestum inforciatum 2" fo. Res sit. Digestum idorciaturn 2" £0. Statum. Digestum nouum 2" fo. tutovis. Codex 2" fo. Repe-. Paruum volumen 2" fo. -bulis. Codex 2" £0. Ratum. Edmundus Lacy 2' fo. Hebyeis. Hugo de sancto Victore 2" fo. et in. Tabula aurea 2" fo. De h c ultimo. Casuarium super decretalia 2" fo. epistolam. Antonius de Vii super iiijto decret [alium] 2' fo. et in causa nri. Repertorium iuris 2" fa imta i l l d . Magister summarum 2" fo. g i p i t . Mesue 2" £0. omnium memovia.

[On cover.] Item Bartholomeus de proprietalibus rerum 2' fo. -neque. Item Januensis 2" fo. puosdam. In manibus M.

' Baldus, cf: p. 8. Dryell became a Fellow of the College in 1440,